


The High Way to Hell (Folie à Deux)

by acareeroutofrobbingbanks



Series: The High Way to Hell [10]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Character Death, Demons, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Gore, M/M, Sexual Content, Sexual Violence, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, Violence, Werewolves, elements of noncon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:40:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 183,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acareeroutofrobbingbanks/pseuds/acareeroutofrobbingbanks
Summary: By 2008, Fall Out Boy was on top of the world. They’d had their Rolling Stones cover, their Grammy nomination, and their platinum album. Oh, and they had also achieved infamy among the magical community for being the best hunters in the world.But for all the glamour that came with dragon slaying, vampire hunting, and falling in love, some things got left unsettled along the way. And when a new threat rises up to destroy Fall Out Boy for good, it may be the one thing that a vampire, werewolf, fairy, and infallible human are incapable of handling.ʎɯǝuǝ ʇsɹoʍ uʍo ɹnoʎ ǝɹɐ noʎ





	1. We've Got a Big Mess On Our Hands

**Author's Note:**

> (warning for non-explicit elements/hints at noncon, blood, gore, violence)

             Pete was packing for the tour while Patrick slept. While his boyfriend slept.

            _Boyfriend_. Patrick was his _boyfriend_.

            Pete was still wrapping his head around that. Probably-straight twenty-two-year-old Pete would never have imagined that he might end up in bed with Patrick Stump, the nerdy high-schooler who had a hell of a singing voice but was decidedly male and not exactly Christian Bale. It wasn’t like Pete had thought he was ugly, just plain. And a little bit short.

            He couldn’t see anything plain about Patrick now. Not in the fluid way his fingers moved across a guitar, or in the way the light caught every color in his eyes which couldn’t be categorized as green, blue, brown, or grey. There was nothing plain in the sound of his laughter or the glow of his aura or the soft curves of his chest. Pete felt euphoric whenever he looked at him.

            And once the two of them had gotten together, it seemed as though _everything_ had come together. Like Pete had been driving in the wrong gear his whole life and now he had finally shifted to the right one. Before the Honda Civic Tour, Patrick had already been staying at Pete’s house, so all he had to do was move his things from the guest bedroom into the master suite. Pete and Patrick had blown through all the couple firsts in under twenty-four hours: from first kiss (first _real_ kiss, as Pete identified the kiss after he dragged Patrick out of the dragon’s mouth) to first time to moving in together.

            “I only spent a few months of my adult life not living with you,” Patrick had said in the middle of carrying his clothes into Pete’s bedroom.

            “You’re just now moving in with me. Officially.”

            “I’ve lived here for most of a year,” Patrick said. “Like, my living with you is not a new thing.”

            “You’re just now moving in,” Pete insisted, and he had kissed him, and the clothes Patrick was carrying were then forgotten, because hey, Patrick’s mouth.

            Pete was aware of the honeymoon phase, but he felt like this was different. Patrick was glowing around him, and Pete was sure he was glowing too. There was a small worry in the back of his head that the prophecy hadn’t been fulfilled yet—that the fall of the dragon hadn’t been the fall Ryan had predicted—but Pete was too selfishly happy to care in that moment.

            Or any moment.

            There was Patrick. Every time Pete woke up, there was Patrick lying next to him, with a sleepy morning smile on his face. There were midnight trips to the grocery store for ice cream and swinging by Blockbuster immediately after for some awful 80’s fantasy movie. There was kissing and morning sex and making dinner and taking the dogs on walks together.

            There were changes, of course. The band went from two buses to three, because Andy wanted his daughter on a non-smoking bus and Joe still wanted to smoke, and neither of them were willing to put up with Pete and Patrick caught in the throes of early love.

Some things didn’t change. Patrick was as obstinate and stubborn as ever when it came to music. Writing and recording. He didn’t punch Pete in the face anymore, which was nice, but he still shouted a lot. And occasionally tore up Pete’s lyrics with a blunt “this is garbage; write me something better.” In a weird way, Pete was grateful. He wouldn’t know how to deal with a Patrick who suddenly became nice and easygoing in the studio. It wouldn’t have been the real him.

            The only bad thing that had happened between Pete and Patrick getting together and the start of the tour was the dreams.

            As if summoned by the thought, Patrick started stirring on the bed. The thick beige duvet was tangled up at the foot of the bed, no longer covering him. His arms jerked a little and his face was no longer smooth and peaceful with regular deep sleep but furrowed and upset. Pete could tell that he was deep asleep from the way his eyes darted back and forth behind his eyelids, but the problem was he wasn’t sure if Patrick was dreaming his own dream or someone else’s.

            It had started with Joe. Recently the four of them had started taking breaks from each other whenever a tour ended. Pete and Patrick obviously weren’t about to split up once Honda Civic was over, but Joe and Andy each went home. Since the next tour was starting soon after, it was silently acknowledged that they were going to stay apart and get some space before Young Wild Things began.  Pete had assumed Joe was pretty sick of him after the hellish week at the end of the last tour. He was shocked when, not even a week into their break, Joe called him and woke him up in the middle of the night.

            “Pete.” Joe sounded winded and scared enough that all the sleep melted off of Pete. He sat bolt upright, brows furrowed, and pulled the phone closer to his ear so fast it yanked the charger from the wall. Joe never sounded scared like that unless something was terribly wrong. Patrick was lying next to him in the bed, and Pete was okay, so... Andy? Had something happened to him? He was so caught up in panic that Joe said his name a few times, each increasing in volume, before he replied.

            “I’m here,” Pete said. He felt chilled. “What’s wrong?”

            “Are you— are you okay?” Joe asked. That, Pete thought, was an intensely stupid question, given that Joe was the one who called in the middle of the night.

            “As okay as can be expected when you give me a heart attack, why?” he asked.

            “You’re.” Joe stopped, trying to catch his breath. “Were you having a nightmare?”

            What? Where was this coming from?  

            “I think so,” Pete said. Patrick stirred next to him, so Pete got out of the bed and walked into the bathroom. He shut the door behind him and turned on the light. “Shit, dude, I’m usually having nightmares, you know that. Why?”

            “What was it about?” Joe asked.

            Trying to recall his dreams was usually easy for Pete, but after being shocked from sleep so suddenly, it was harder to grab hold of it. Now that his fear for Joe had mostly faded to annoyance, some flashes were coming back. The Drake. Huddling in a bathtub, too small for two people, his knees crushed to his chest. There was blood everywhere and someone was crying— not Patrick, like it had been in real life, but Pete. Crying over a corpse.

            He’d been thinking about the Drake and the vampires ever since he and Patrick had come home. Patrick had said that was when he started falling in love with Pete, and Pete wanted to think about that, falling in love, but his mind kept lingering on all that blood, too much blood.

            “Patrick,” he said. “I was dreaming about when the door got ripped off at the Drake, and the vampires were crawling all over him. But, you know, more of a nightmare version of it. Darker and more blood, less survival.” The fear came creeping back into his ribs, icy and uninvited. “Again, I ask _why_?”

            The line was silent for way too long before Joe said, “Because I just had the same dream. Except I couldn’t have because I was never in your hotel room and I don’t know about all the details and in this dream, I was you.”

            “Just a coincidence,” Pete said quickly, before he could start believing Joe. “I’m sure we’ve all had nightmares about—”

            “There was no door on the bathroom either, right?” Joe said. “And you two were hiding in the bathtub together? The wallpaper was green and gold all the way into the bathroom, but it was covered in blood-”

            “Stop it,” Pete said, too loud. He was going to wake Patrick if he wasn’t careful. “That doesn’t… you were in the hotel too, dude. All hotel rooms look the same.”

            “The bathtub?”

            Pete was silent.

            “This is weird,” he admitted at last. “Is it a pack thing, do you think?”

            “I’ve never heard of this being a pack thing before,” Joe said, still sounding shaky. “Maybe we can call those All Time Low kids. The Backstreet Boys. Somebody. See if this really is…”

            Pete waited for him to continue, but he never did.

            “Is it that bad?” Pete asked.

            “Isn’t it bad for you?” Joe asked.

            “Bad dreams aren’t that uncommon for me,” Pete said. “And you kind of startled me out of it.”

            “Think I scared myself awake,” Joe said. “So… everyone’s okay?”

            “Unless Andy is secretly dying,” Pete said. “This is weird, yeah, but get some sleep, okay?”

            Joe had agreed and gone back to sleep. But it hadn’t stopped. Two nights later, Pete had woken up to realize that he was having a sex dream about himself, which was right up there for one of the weirdest experiences of his life. That one, at least, was pretty easily solved by waking Patrick up and having sleepy sex right then, but it was eerie to remember how he got hard at _himself_ moaning. Then Andy had complained about dreaming about a childhood home that wasn’t his, and Joe dreamt about anxieties over Carmilla. Patrick woke up with morning wood and wouldn’t let Pete touch him, taking an ice-cold shower instead because he had dreamt of Marie. Pete revisited the Arma Angelus van from the point of view of a scared high schooler, saw kitchens splattered with wendigo gore, and had night sweats when he heard Carmilla asking “where’s _my_ mom?” Patrick had nightmares that weren’t his. Even on the mornings where he wasn’t awoken by nightmares, he looked confused. Andy and Joe eventually stopped calling, because it was quickly becoming commonplace.

            Right now, Patrick was tossing and turning. He wasn’t muttering in his sleep yet, thankfully. He had always been a pretty heavy sleeper, looking more like he was hibernating than anything else. So far, the only pattern Pete had picked out was that the dream with the most intense emotion usually took the most precedent. One time, all four of them woke up from a too-vivid remembrance of Joe’s first time transforming into a wolf, something Pete never wanted to think about again. It had been too painful, the bedroom too childish, the hands too small. So whatever Patrick (or Andy, or Joe) was dreaming about, it must have been bad.

            Pete spent a few seconds debating whether or not to wake him up, but when Patrick made a pained noise in his sleep, Pete decided. He couldn’t wait through even a few minutes of hearing that. He sat down on the edge of the bed and shook Patrick’s shoulder until his eyes blew open. He was breathing heavily, and he blinked a few times before seeing Pete and then his aura evened out.

            “Dreams again?” Patrick said, and though it was a statement, it sounded like a question. Pete nodded and smoothed his hair back.

            “Whose?” Pete asked.

            “Andy,” Patrick said. He glanced down at his hands and shuddered. “I was— I saw Andrea and all the blood and— Jesus, hand me my phone?”

            Pete unplugged Patrick’s phone and gave it to him. Andy was on speed dial, and in under thirty seconds of “just thought you’d wanna be awake, yeah man, get some rest,” he had hung up again.

            “Killing Andrea?” Pete asked. Patrick flinched, but nodded.

            “I’d never pictured it before,” he said. “I mean, I knew, obviously, but. She was still holding Carmilla in the dream.”

            “There’s no telling how much is memory and how much is nightmare,” Pete said. He pulled Patrick in closer though, not minding the excuse to have his arms wrapped around him. _Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend._

            “Yeah,” Patrick said. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was just freaky. Do you think the dreams are a problem?”

            “They don’t seem to be,” Pete said. “I guess it’s worth looking into, but it’s not hurting us, or anything.”

            “I’m losing sleep,” Patrick said. “And if I lose my voice screaming, this tour is gonna suck.” Pete could tell he was joking, from the dry mirth in his eyes and his deadpan voice. But he did have a point.

            “I’ll look into it,” Pete said. “But, hey, now that you’re up…”

            Patrick snorted. “You have the stamina of a sixteen-year-old.”

            Pete laughed at that. “I was actually gonna ask you to help me pack, but I guess I know what’s on your mind.” He kissed the corner of Patrick’s mouth.

            “Okay, so I help you pack and then?” Patrick shifted closer to Pete, pressing his hand against the inside of Pete’s thigh to emphasize his point.

            “And you have the audacity to call me the sixteen-year-old,” Pete said, kissing him again. “Yes, packing then sex and then we’re gonna try to sleep before tomorrow. Ready for yet another US tour?”

            “Can’t wait,” Patrick said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Remind me, when do we get a break again?”

            “When we retire,” Pete said. “But since I was kinda planning on dragging this out till we die of old age, Rolling Stones style, I would actually call it never.”

            Much as he complained, Patrick’s aura settled into the familiar, happy glow, and Pete felt content. Despite being wildly different sizes, their closets had merged into one, so having both of them up at four in the morning made packing a lot easier. Pete turned on the lights and their dogs lumbered in to shed on everything. Pete packed all of Patrick’s best t-shirts with every intent on stealing them, and Patrick put in way too many of Pete’s hoodies to just be for Pete, then gave up on clothing altogether in favor of packing up recording equipment. Pete sighed, and put Patrick’s jeans in the suitcase for him. By all rights Pete should have been the one forgetting basics like socks and toothbrushes, but Patrick was a remarkably forgetful person.

            It wasn’t like Pete didn’t already know this. It wasn’t like he didn’t already know Patrick. But before they had been running parallel to one another. Now they were tangled up so closely, they might have been one person to anyone watching from the outside. Pete loved it.

            He finally (finally) got Patrick to fall back asleep when the sun was rising, and even fell asleep for a little while next to him. The two of them met up with the rest of the band at the first venue, still glowing in a way that made Andy say, “Did my nightmares turn you on that much?”

            “We’re big into bloodplay,” Patrick replied coolly. “So. You know.”

            Andy rolled his eyes but didn’t actually look pissed. Pete read a few emotions from his and Joe’s auras— apprehensive mostly, but they didn’t seem upset that the two of them were together, in full couple mode.

            They hadn’t actually had a Big Band Discussion about the whole thing yet, the kind of discussion Pete thought was inevitable. They would have to, at some point, talk about band dynamics. Reassure them that this didn’t mean it was going to be an Us vs Them situation wherein Pete would always take Patrick’s side, because Patrick made a lot of stupid decisions that needed to be contested. They had talked enough to come up with the new bus situation, but little else. It wasn’t going to be weird. Not if Pete had any say in it.

            Besides, they couldn’t do anything in public at all. Pete and Patrick had discussed it and ran their decision by the band: Fall Out Boy absolutely did not need the kind of publicity scandal that came with “Pete Wentz ditches Ashlee Simpson for Lead Singer.” They would come out someday, they said, with quiet implications that “someday” either meant never or twenty years from then. Patrick was a private person, and Pete did not want to be the household name for “gay” for the next five years.

            As they were loading up the buses, Pete had the sudden and sinking revelation that the tiny honeymoon was over. Back in the real world, he and Patrick could be together on their bus and nowhere else. The thought made him feel almost ill.

            But there was no time to dwell on this— no time for much of anything, not even to kiss Patrick with a _see you soon_ , because then Travie was on top of him with an arm slung around Pete’s shoulders and an enthusiastic punch to the middle of his chest.

            “You finally hopped that,” Travie said by means of greeting.

            “Well, someone else was going to if I didn’t get to him first,” Pete shot back.

            “Nah, he would’ve waited for you,” Travie said easily. “Shame you’ve both been too busy bed-in-for-peace-ing for me to come say hi, but I guess that’s to be expected.” He was leering. Pete rolled his eyes, so he wouldn’t betray the sense of actual discomfort he felt. Facing the rest of the world with Patrick as his boyfriend was a lot stranger than being at home with it. He couldn’t say what was wrong, if wrong was even the right word for it, but something was different.

            “We’re still busy,” Pete said. “If you think you and I are hanging out after shows, then I’m sorry but that’s not happening.”

            “It’s cool,” Travie said, raising his hands in the air. “I’ve got a girlfriend. But damn. I don’t know. Never expected this. How are you doing?”

            “I still think I’m dreaming,” Pete said. Travie looked at him and raised one eyebrow. And damn, but Travie always could get Pete to talk.

            “I’ve got soundcheck in a minute,” Travie said. “But after that…”

            “Can we talk?” Pete asked, relieved when Travie nodded. Travie was a godsend. Possibly a literal god too, but that wasn’t Pete’s problem at that moment.

            His problems were normal, down to earth things. Without a girlfriend to steal makeup from, he bought cheap shit at Walgreens that smeared all over his face, and he wasn’t sure who to ask for help before the show. He had a phone interview that night and they were probably going to ask about Ashley’s new boyfriend, who Patrick had pointed out to Pete during a late-night grocery store run. Then there was the fact that one of the emo kids with shaggy hair similar to his in Cute Is What We Aim For wouldn’t stop staring at him.

            Lots of people were milling around outside of the buses, and lots of people stopped and stared at Pete, most likely because he was Pete Wentz. Most of his band had disappeared, probably off catching up with the other bands. Pete had work to do too, helping to load instruments or ironing out things with the people that Island Def Jam had sent on tour with them. He was sort of enjoying just being on his own outside, easing back into tour life like he was slowly getting into a cold pool, as opposed to jumping right in, like he used to do.

            He was on the precipice of hunting down Dirty to bug him and maybe make him drop an expensive piece of equipment when he noticed the Cute Is What We Aim For guy was still giving him a death glare.

            Pete walked over to him, hands in his pockets. He was so not in the mood to start the tour on the bad side of some dude he’d met maybe once at a party. There were times when being fae was a perk. He flashed the guy a dazzling smile and stuck his hand out.

            “Shaant, right?” he asked. Shaant nodded, his facial expression switching from angry to dubious.

            “We’ve met,” he said. Pete shrugged, still smiling. He focused on exuding an aura of friendliness, willing Shaant to like him. He could see it working behind the other guy’s face, but damn if he didn’t seem determined to stay pissed.

            “Wouldn’t be shocked if you’ve forgotten me,” Pete said. “You looked upset,” he probed then, and Shaant scowled.

            “I don’t want to start anything,” Shaant said. “But— Jesus, do you always have mood swings like this?”

            Pete’s friendly aura dropped for a second in surprise. That was usually the sort of thing people said to him after knowing him for much longer than a day or two.

            “Mood swings like what?” he asked. He tried not to sound annoyed, and to remember he was keeping the peace. Shaant scowled at him.

            “Funny,” he said, not looking like it was very funny at all. “Was it not you who was being a dick to me all fucking morning?”

            There was the hostility Pete had seen in his aura. Of course, the problem there being:

            “I was asleep all morning,” Pete said. “I just got here.”

            “Oh, so your evil twin was the one who said opening for a band as big as you guys might be a good ‘stepping stone’ for us, if we ‘learn to fucking play.’” He put air quotations around the words Pete had supposedly said, which looked sort of pathetic. But the hurt emanating from his aura was real. Pete frowned.

            “Yeah, must’ve been Smete Smentz,” Pete said. He shook his head. “When did this happen?”

            “Are you for real?” Shaant asked. He looked both pissed and concerned, and a hundred percent genuine. Which was not good.

            “I wouldn’t say something like that,” Pete said. Shaant rolled his eyes.

            “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “By the way, the sunglasses indoors look is douchey as fuck.”

            Pete stared at him as he walked away. Shaant hadn’t been lying, Pete knew that much, and he was hurt, but Pete had definitely been sleeping.

            There were two options, as far as Pete was concerned. Either one of the techs or roadies for one of the five artists on tour looked a lot like him and had a mean sense of humor, or there was some magic bullshit going on. Again.

            He was really hoping it was the first of the two.

            There was no time, really, with all of the hectic first-day panic of tour to stop and have a serious conversation with the band. Pete knew it was beyond necessary that the four of them talked, but there were too many people to meet, and too many final details to settle. They had to talk about dreams, him and Patrick as a couple, and possibly a doppelganger, and Pete just didn’t have the free time to worry about a look-alike wandering around.

            The day blurred by, and before Pete knew it the show was over (and they had been incredible, better than before, so there was no need to worry about the band’s onstage chemistry getting messed up). They were back in the green room, taking a minute to breathe before they got back on the buses. And, finally there was a chance for the four of them to talk.

            Pete pulled the door shut tight, catching the eye of a tech glaring at him before he did. He perched on the arm of a sofa and said “So.”

            “You know, I don’t miss sharing a bus with you guys,” Andy said. “But I think it made strategic meetings easier.”

            “This isn’t a strategic meeting, is it?” Patrick asked. “Is it? Already?”

            “Well, we’re figuring out this dream bullshit, aren’t we?” Joe asked. “Because this dream sharing? It’s gotta stop.”

            “Is it a pack thing?” Andy asked.

            “Are you asking me?” Joe asked. “That’s speciesist. Specist? Ugh, just because I’m the wolf here, it doesn’t mean I know. Pete, you know the little All Time Low punks, can you call and ask them?”

            “They’re not— I don’t think this is a pack thing,” Pete said. “I read a hell of a lot about wolf packs while we were trying to get our pack off the ground, and nowhere did it mention sharing dreams.”

            “Some kind of curse, then,” Patrick said.

            “Well, it’s a weird fucking curse if it is,” Joe said. “It’s not doing a lot of damage, it’s mostly just annoying. What’s the endgame with that?”

            “Maybe someone we defeated once could be petty,” Pete said. “The dreams aren’t actually my biggest issue right now.”

            “Ah, the marital bliss issue, then?” Joe said. Pete started.

            “The— me and Patrick?” he asked. Andy looked at the ground as though embarrassed, and Joe suddenly seemed sheepish.

            “Oh. That wasn’t what you wanted to talk about?”

            “No, but apparently you do,” Pete said. Joe looked at Andy, but Andy wouldn’t meet his eyes. He sighed.

            “It’s not really an issue, per se,” Joe said. “More a thing we ought to discuss. You didn’t want to come _out_ out yet, right?”

            “Definitely not,” Patrick said.

            “Well, did we want to explain to the people we’re touring with why there are three Fall Out Boy buses for four members?” he asked.

            “That,” Pete said, “was not your only issue.”

            “No,” Joe said levelly. “But it’s worth discussing.”

            “I’m sure there have already been rumors about us,” Patrick said. He was lounging back in an ancient sofa, looking far more relaxed than Pete felt. “We’ll tell our friends and be subtle in public. As long as you two are comfortable with it.”

            “As long as they’re comfortable with it?” Pete said, turning to Patrick with too much betrayal showing on his face. “Pretty sure it’s just between the two of us—”

            “Not really.” Patrick said. “It’s their band too, our collective name.”

            “No, Pete’s right,” Joe said. Good. “We’ll switch to exclusively the pride circuit if that’s how you guys want it, but Andy and I,” he glanced at Andy again, who didn’t seem to want to be part of this conversation, but wasn’t stopping Joe from speaking for him, “just wanted to know what to say if someone asks.”

            “Shrug and tell them to ask us their damn selves,” Patrick said. He looked the teensiest bit smug.

            “What else?” Pete pried. Now even Joe wouldn’t make eye-contact.

            “I mean, is it gonna be weird? Actually?” he asked.

            Pete sighed.

            “Yeah,” he said. “Probably. But we’ll deal, right?”

            “Good enough for me,” Andy said. “No more heart to hearts this early in the tour.”

            “Or sober,” Patrick added. “Pete, what was your other issue?”

            “There’s something pretending to be me and messing with the other guys on tour,” Pete said. The room got very quiet.

            “Well why the fuck did you let me go on about relationship bullshit, then?” Joe said. “Jesus, what did it do?”

            “I don’t know,” Pete said. “But I guess it looked like me and was a dick to Shaant, because now he’s not speaking to me.”

            “Is that how you say his name?” Patrick asked quietly.

            “Holy fuck,” Joe said. “Okay. So something that looks like you and clearly has bad intentions. This is, like, a very fucking serious kind of situation and you didn’t mention it because?”

            “Emergencies don’t really feel like emergencies after a few years with this band.” Pete admitted. “No one is actively getting maimed, so I figured it would probably be okay if we waited a bit.”

            “I feel like, given that you are Pete Wentz, you really underestimate the power of being Pete Wentz,” Joe said. Pete was shocked at his severity, the way Joe leaned forward in his chair, eyes narrowed, and muscles tensed. “He could hurt someone, he could _kill_ someone and leave your fingerprints all over the crime scene!”

            “He could do an interview as you and sabotage you,” Andy said.

            “Be serious!” Joe half-shouted.

            “That is a serious worry,” Patrick said. “Was it just Shaant?”

            “As far as I know,” Pete said. The anxiety he had felt earlier picked up heat again, worry rising up in his throat. “What do you think it would do?”

            “We clearly don’t know anything about it,” Joe said. “It’s gotta be some kind of shapeshifter, right? That or a really powerful spell someone’s put on themself.”

            “Or a glamour,” Pete said, voice then very flat. He hadn’t begun thinking about what it might be till then, but a glamour would make a lot of sense, and be very, very bad news. “It could be someone from Seelie Court trying to get my attention.”

            Patrick rested his hand on top of Pete’s, not quite holding it, but still reassuring.

            “But they stopped, didn’t they?” he said. “I mean, it’s been nearly two years now. Haven’t they given up?”

            Pete let out a hollow laugh.

            “Stopped because it’s been two years? Two years is nothing to fae, a blink of an eye. Fae live for thousands of years. And I really couldn’t say if they’ll ever give up.”

            “So maybe fae,” Joe said. “Fae or a spell or a shapeshifter. Anything else we should look into?”

            Pete shrugged. He was lost in a tangle of thoughts: the fae he had managed to fight off, the Seelie Court, and as much as he didn’t want to think about it, the Unseelie Court. There were a lot of things to worry about, and the idea of someone else going around looking like him was more than a little unsettling. That was his face, his voice— the gravity of the damage it could do settled on him with cold weight.

            “I can let KTC know we’re looking for something, and you give Ryan a call,” Joe said. Pete was grateful he was taking command. “We ought to get on the buses, but we’ll do some research tonight and regroup in the morning.” Joe glanced at Pete and Patrick. “Actually, do research tonight, okay?”

            “Well, you’ve just rescinded your invitation to the gay orgy,” Patrick said, rolling his eyes. “You’re making it weird. Go research Pete’s evil twin.”

            They walked out of the venue and onto their separate buses, Pete brushing past a guy as they did. The guy gave Pete a hurt look and hurried in the other direction. Pete felt almost guilty as he watched Joe walk onto a separate bus, but there wasn’t much to be done. He’d spent so long sharing space with Joe that he almost felt like he had turned traitor by moving out, but no one had seemed to mind. He knew Joe wasn’t upset. But it felt like the ache of growing up to sleep somewhere else, just a little more bitter than nostalgia.

            The sullen mood evaporated fairly quickly. Once the door was shut Patrick pulled Pete close against him, mouth pressed just underneath his ear.

            “You know, we could totally cram some research in tomorrow morning,” he said. “Spend the evening christening the tour instead?”

            “I think you have a very theologically unsound idea of what christening is,” Pete said. He could feel his heartbeat trailing all across his skin, but it could wait. He gently untangled himself from Patrick and pulled out his phone. “Come on. We’ve got the youngest member of the Beatles to bother, and work to do.”

***

            “So, you’re thinking it’s a shapeshifter?”

            Ryan’s voice crackled through the speakerphone. Joe leaned forward to hear better and glanced at Pete. He was tense with worry, but nothing majorly bad had happened yet. Maybe, Joe thought, every tour would feel like they were sitting on a ticking time bomb. That was how it seemed to him.

            “We don’t know what it is,” Pete said. “None of us have seen it at all, but we’ve heard from other people that it looks like me.”

            “And you’re sure it’s not just someone on the tour who, you know, looks like you?” Ryan asked.

            “Shaant was sure,” Pete said. “And a couple of the roadies have been giving me… weird looks. They can’t all be mistaking someone else for me, right?”

            “Maybe,” Ryan said. “It’s worth going through all the non-supernatural explanations first, just in case. But, okay, if it’s something else… shapeshifting is really intense magic. No ordinary witch could do something like that. In fact, in terms of magic users I’ve only ever heard of skinwalkers, and even _they_ only transform into animals. Like, ninety-nine percent of all shapeshifting is shifting into animals.”

            “I think you’re right, Pete, and it’s probably some sort of glamour. There are fae out there who could pull that off, and fae would be less dangerous.”

            “Less dangerous?” Andy asked, eyebrows raised.

            “Yes,” Ryan said firmly. “I’ve run into a shapeshifter before, just once and— look, pray you’ve got a weird lookalike, and if not that, pray it’s fae. You’ve handled Seelie Court before, you could do it again. Don’t take any food or drink from strangers.”

            “Does that include catering?” Patrick asked.

            “Fuck if I know,” Ryan said. “I’ll go look into it more, but I need more information. See if you can find this thing yourselves and in the meantime be careful.”

            Joe waited for more, but after a second, he heard a beep and the static cut off.

            “He didn’t even say goodbye?” Joe said. “Rude.”

            “Fae?” Andy asked Pete.

            “Maybe.” Pete stood up. The four of them had gathered in Pete and Patrick’s bus, which was good middle ground because, despite smelling the worst out of the three buses, it was non-smoking and made the most sense for them to congregate in. Joe dragged himself back up onto the couch and leaned his head back.

            “Maybe we should spread out,” he said at last. “I mean, Ryan said we should look for this thing so we can give him a better description. We can cover more ground if—”

            “It’s not safe,” Pete said, already shaking his head. “If this is fae, and one of you ends up alone—”

            “We can handle it,” Joe said firmly. “We’ll be in public, we’re not teenagers anymore. And we need to stop this in its tracks.”

            “And if one of us gets replaced by another fae with a glamour?” Pete asked. “We should stick together. Maybe there is some… easier explanation.”

            Like anything about this band had ever been easy, Joe thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. He would stay next to Pete, if that made him feel better, but if whatever looked like him caused more havoc than they could handle… Joe wanted to find the thing and get it over with. He was tired, tired of fighting monsters and looking over his shoulder. He wanted a normal tour, if not a normal life.

            His own research had turned up little, because there was little to go off of. Something that looked like something else could be everything from a girl that got her hands on a spell book to an Eldritch monster. He doubted it was an eldritch monster. (Joe decided that if anything HP Lovecraft wrote was real, he was giving up the monster hunting business. No anti-semitic tentacle demons for him.) But there were a lot of mythical creatures that could make themselves look like Pete, so in the interim Joe was looking for a motive.

            While Pete and Ryan and maybe his whole band was convinced this was a fae issue, Joe wasn’t so sure. Whatever was attacking them needed a motive, and while the fae obviously wanted Pete to join them, Joe couldn’t figure out how they would accomplish that with a clone of Pete smearing dirt on his reputation. This felt more like someone with a grudge, but maybe Ryan didn’t want to believe that simply because it would involve such strong magic.

            Of course, it would be so much easier to figure this out if Joe could just _see_ the thing.

            Joe did have other things to keep him busy as well. Things like begging off of interviews with the promise of babysitting his favorite half-vampire niece.

            “Your only half-vampire niece, I hope,” Andy said dryly. Joe winked at him.

            So while the rest of the band was stuck doing yet another radio interview (the questions had finally migrated from Infinity on High to “what’s your next project?!”), Joe got to heat up a juice box of what he strongly suspected was Patrick’s blood and play the why game with the almost three year old living on Andy’s bus.

            “How come you don’t drink blood?” Carmilla asked. She had a booster seat set up at the table, and she was swinging her feet back and forth in the space underneath. Joe snorted as he handed the juice box to her.

            “Not everyone drinks blood, Carm.”

            “Why?”

            “I don’t like the taste of it.”

            “Why?”

            “It tastes kind of sticky to me.”

            “Why?”  
            “Cuz I’m not a vampire.”

            “Why?”

            Joe eventually sat down next to her and settled in for what was sure to be a long day. Most of that time was spent leaning over a LeapFrog learning pad and trying to teach her letters, but it was nice. She nuzzled into his chest, warm and cute as any kid he’d ever seen. Joe was grateful every day that she looked more like Andy than her mom, with a thick shock of bright orange curls hanging down nearly to her shoulders. He helped drag her finger to trace the letters but stopped when he saw something just outside of the window.

            It was just a flash, like someone running across the front of the bus, but there was something so deliberate and close about it that unease ripped through Joe’s body. He set the LeapFrog down next to Carmilla and walked over to the window, glancing out at the parking lot.

            Fall Out Boy kept a lot of secrets hidden on tour buses, from secret kids to secret relationships, and if some tech had paparazzi dreams of sneaking photos, Joe would be sure to nip it in the bud. But something about just the flash of dark hair, the speed at which it disappeared from Joe’s vision… He had much better than average sight. Whatever what moved out of the way would have to be pretty damn fast for him not to have caught a glimpse of it.

            “Uncle Joe?” Carmilla enunciated the words carefully. “Is somethin’ wrong?”

            “No, sweetie, everything’s okay,” Joe said. He glanced around the parking lot again but couldn’t see anything. He sat back down with her, but this time kept glancing up at the window, determined not to miss anything important.

            They played like that without Joe seeing anything until Andy came back onto the bus. Carmilla shrieked and stretched her arms out to Andy, making his face burst out into a smile. Andy scooped Carmilla up and swung her around in a wide circle, her gasps of laughter echoing around the whole bus.

            “How was my little monster?” Andy asked, not turning away from Carmilla for a second.

            “A terrifying creature, like always,” Joe said. “We played some letter games and discussed why humans don’t drink blood.”

            “I don’t blame her for the confusion,” Andy said. “Blood is delicious.”

            “Gross,” Joe said. “How was the interview?”

            “Well, I didn’t say more than my name, and nobody noticed,” Andy said. “So pretty average from my standpoint. Although I’d’ve been a lot more pissed if Pete was upset about Ashlee.”

            “Fame is glamorous,” Joe said sagely. “Anyway, I’m gonna go find something to eat myself before the show. You dropped something.”

            Andy glanced down at his feet where a piece of paper sat on the floor. He tightened his grip on his daughter before bending over and pinched the paper between his fingers. His eyebrows pulled together, and he glanced back up at Joe.

            “Is this a joke?” he asked.

            “Is what a joke?” Joe asked. “You didn’t drop that?”

            Rather than answering, Andy handed the slip of paper over to Joe. It was lined paper, uneven and smaller than traditional notebook paper like it might have been torn out of a composition notebook. Written across the paper perpendicular to the lines were a few words in scratchy handwriting.

            “WATCH YOUR BACK. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE ARE BEHIND YOU. XOXO.”

            “I haven’t seen this,” Joe said. Andy’s face was still composed, but now visibly concerned. His forehead was furrowed, and his eyes were narrow.

            “It wasn’t here when I left,” he said firmly. “And you’re sure you—?”

            “I haven’t seen it,” Joe said. “And I stood up an hour or so ago, I would’ve noticed it on the floor.”

            “He dropped it while you were by the window,” Carmilla said, nonplussed. Joe and Andy both stared at her.

            “What?” Joe asked.

            “Uncle Pete came in when you went over to the window,” she said. “He made me shh,” she said, holding a finger up to her lips, “And dropped it.”

            Joe could hear the intense strain in Andy’s voice, but he hoped Carmilla couldn’t.

            “And did Pete do anything else?” Andy asked, voice higher than usual. Carmilla shook her head.

            “He just waved,” she said, and wriggled her own fingers in demonstration. Andy and Joe met each other’s eyes.

            “Let’s go see Uncle Pete and Uncle Patrick, okay baby?” Andy said, rocking Carmilla just a little too fast. Carmilla cried out happily, and Andy grabbed the note and shoved it deep in his pocket, leading the way back out. As they walked, Andy kept shooting Joe dark looks, somewhere between terrified and furious, but he had to know that Joe would never have let anything hurt Carmilla. Whatever that thing was hadn’t done anything, and Joe would have heard if it had. Of course, he didn’t want to say anything like that out loud. He thought it best not to rile Andy, who was already more on edge than Joe had seen him in a very long time.

            Andy all but kicked the door down to Pete and Patrick’s bus, where the two of them looked up in one fluid motion from the laptop they were both bent over. Pete reeled back almost at once. Joe didn’t even want to think about how thunderous Andy’s aura must have seemed at that moment.

            “Look at this,” Andy growled, pushing the note into Pete’s hands. Pete and Patrick both looked over it, and the lines of concern on Pete’s face deepened. Patrick’s mouth moved in the shape of the x’s and o’s.

            “What is it?” Pete asked eventually.

            “It was on the floor of Andy’s bus, put between me and Carm while my back was turned,” Joe said. He glanced at Andy and Carmilla, who had shrunk down, having realized that people were angry. “Carmilla says you put it there.”

            “I didn’t,” Pete said quickly.

            “I know,” Andy growled. “But something that looks like you did.”

            All four of them looked stony, while Carmilla hid her face in Andy’s chest.

            “What do you want to do?” Pete asked Andy after a long silence.

            “I want to find this thing and get rid of it,” Andy said. “I can tell her not to trust strangers but you’re not a stranger, Pete.”

            “I know,” Pete said, the words too heavy. “But whatever this is, it seems like it’s avoiding us.”

            “Guess I’m not playing bait this time then,” Patrick said with a small smile. Andy didn’t return the look, and neither did Joe.

            “We should stay calm,” Joe said, though he was sure he couldn’t stay calm if it were his kid. “It hasn’t done anything yet.”

            “But it could,” Andy said shortly. Then he sighed. “I’m gonna go back to my bus. See what you can find.”

            Andy and Carmilla left, leaving Joe with Pete and Patrick. He didn’t have the faintest idea how to look for something trying so pointedly to not be seen by them, but he sat down next to the other two and leaned to see the laptop as well. Pete started calling around, trying to see if he could find some contact who could put him in touch with someone at Seelie Court. Joe wasn’t incredibly invested in the Wikipedia page on Lubber fiends, since he still wasn’t convinced that this was an issue of fae. He supposed it would be good to verify that it wasn’t, but he still felt like there was a much better use of his time.

            It felt like a complete waste spending the whole day researching when it was so nice out and they were surrounded by other bands. Joe was full of pent up energy from a day of sitting down when he went to bed that night, the next day much the same. A couple of the techs for The Plain White Tees were avoiding Pete and being overly polite when they did run into him, but Joe didn’t know how to approach them to ask what was wrong or what they had seen. Since he hadn’t personally seen anything, there was little else he could do but wait.

            His sleep was uneasy, and one day he made the mistake of staying up too late with Gym Class Heroes and falling asleep much later in the night than he usually did. Patrick was usually the last to bed, a problem Joe only remembered once he was already dreaming.

            Still lying down and awash in warmth, he was breathing slow and deep, feeling the rise and fall of his chest with every breath. The room around him seemed to be glowing softly, everything awash in the amber light of dreaming. He realized he was asleep, as he often did, though knowing he was asleep never gave him the omnipotence of most lucid dreamers.

            He could only see the ceiling of this room, lying flat on his back as he was. However, he could hear the quiet thrum of a fan, which wasn’t doing much for the heat in the room. And then— then he could feel more warmth, a finger tracing patterns up the side of his thigh and warm breath washing over his chest. The breath was followed immediately by lips pressing down against his side, someone kissing a trail down his chest, down his stomach…

            He groaned, reaching out to grab the girl’s hair. His fingers buried deep into thick hair, but it was too short for him to take hold of. His eyes opened, and he saw Pete staring back up at him.

            “Fuck!” Joe gasped. He sat up straight, breathing heavily. The sheets of his bunk were sweat soaked where he was lying, and he felt deeply nauseous. Sure, the others had complained about seeing way too much of Marie, but Pete—

            Joe shuddered, almost vomiting. That was too many levels of not okay. And some part of him deep down felt overwhelmingly lonely in response to waking up on his own. His bus was much colder and darker than the dream had been. The incredibly vivid dream. He could practically still feel Pete’s hands running down his hips and—

            Joe retched a little. Of all the places his subconscious could have gone, that was the worst. He dug his phone out of his bag and called Pete immediately, not shocked that he was still up.

            “Hello?” Pete’s voice was very low, possibly because he was trying not to wake Patrick.

            “Go fuck your boyfriend,” Joe said firmly.

            “What?” Pete said, much louder now. “What are you—?”

            “He’s already dreaming about you, dude,” Joe said. “I need brain bleach, and you need to go have sex. And try and get some sleep yourself.”

            “I really, really don’t need you giving me sex advice,” Pete said. He sounded mortified, which Joe was selfishly glad for. If Pete was embarrassed, it felt like permission for Joe not to be.

            “I’m just giving you a suggestion,” Joe said.

            “Stop dreaming about us, pervert,” Pete said, his voice almost light. Still embarrassed, still annoyed, but it was easier if they joked about it.

            “I want nothing more,” Joe said. “Take care of your dude.”

            “Good night, Joseph.”

            After hanging up with Pete, Joe stood up, not quite ready to go to sleep again yet, just in case. He walked out into the lounge area, sat down at the table and watched as the countryside sped by. They were getting back into midwest territory, and the land outside constantly alternated between corn and soybean fields. A patchwork of farmland that looked almost pretty from above, that had always been so exhausting and homogenous to drive through. It was weird how much Joe sort of missed it.

            While he was up, he pulled out his computer to do some research. There was nothing better to do while he waited to fall back to sleep. And sleep was sure to be in short supply anyway.

            Instead, he looked up _doppelganger_. Most of the mythology seemed to claim it was an omen of what was to come for the person it emulated, but that didn’t make any sense. Pete wasn’t mean, and even when he was, he wasn’t cruel. It was also listed some places as an omen of death, but usually these sightings were benign. The doppelgangers wouldn’t do anything wrong and would just appear. One such double in mythology turned out to be a mistranslation of texts. Joe slammed the laptop shut, frustrated.

            There was nothing helpful. A lot of Harry Potter fanfiction and scary stories, and nothing else. He suddenly wished he had the note on him that the thing had left so that he could see if any kind of scent clung to it, much as he complained about bloodhound jokes. Funny, he hadn’t sensed anything behind him when Carmilla said it had left the note.

            That was a worthwhile thought, he realized. Though he wasn’t often in the habit of talking to Ryan on the phone, he had his number, and he called him then, not really noticing or caring that it was past three in the morning.

            “Hello?” Ryan sounded ragged when he answered the phone.

            “You up?” Joe asked.

            “Obviously,” Ryan said. “What’s wrong now?”

            “The thing, whatever it is,” Joe said. “It— did Pete tell you what happened earlier today?”

            “Yes,” Ryan said. “Creepy note, threatened the kid, defcon five, go on.”

            “Right, well whatever it was had to have been right behind me and I didn’t hear it, or smell it, and like. I’m a werewolf, but even a human should’ve heard that. Does that help it all?”

            “Huh.” Something creaked on Ryan’s end. “Maybe? Say, has anyone touched this thing?”

            “No,” Joe said. “But it wrote something down.”

            “Yeah, I figured that for myself,” Ryan said. “Okay. I’m gonna look into it, but probably in the morning. Try and get some rest. I have a couple of theories but…” he trailed off.

            “But?” Joe prompted.

            “Not sure,” Ryan said. “Keep an eye out for this thing.”  
            “No shit,” Joe said. “Night.”

            “Night.”

            Morning came quickly, and thankfully Joe wasn’t woken up by anyone else’s dreams between falling asleep and getting shaken awake for sound check. The rest of the tour seemed entirely unaware of whatever was stalking Fall Out Boy, but Joe was on edge. More than that— he couldn’t defend why, but while setting up equipment and exploring the venue, he felt like he was being followed, or watched. When he stood alone behind the stage he felt like there was someone else there. He checked everywhere and listened as hard as he could, but there was nothing, no one.

            Paranoia, probably, he told himself. The rest of his band was on edge as well, but everyone else on the tour seemed to be thriving. Joe, Pete, Dirty and Travie went out to a local Halloween store on a whim to get some crappy decorations for the bus. Dirty and Travie were fine, laughing and taking turns trying on cheap rubber masks. Pete, on the other hand, looked just as distracted as Joe felt.

            The store wasn’t anything like a Spirit Halloween or Halloween City, but instead a permanent fixture Joe that remembered as a highlight of their last time in Champaign. On Dallas and Company’s outer walls, they had enormous statues of dinosaurs that looked like they were bursting out from within the store. Inside the store, the maze of shelves and racks were packed so full of costumes and gags that there was hardly room to walk around. Pulling Pete into a corner of Star Wars costumes, Joe looked over his shoulder and began speaking in a low voice.

            “I don’t think this is fae,” he said. Pete looked at him oddly, and Joe rolled his eyes.

            “This thing that looks like you, I don’t think it’s fae and Ryan doesn’t either. Look, the other day I should have heard something open the door. Even if I didn’t hear it or smell it behind me, I should’ve heard the door open.”

            “What if it was already on the bus?” Pete said, eyes wide like he had frightened himself by his own thought. But Joe shook his head, unfazed.

            “No, I didn’t think it was important earlier, but I saw something out the window first. That’s why I was standing up— I was looking for it. This thing was outside. Then it was inside. How could a fairy do that?”

            Pete looked concerned, but more confused than anything.

            “Some types of fae are very small,” Pete said. “But I don’t know how large they could make themselves appear. Especially unseelie.”

            “What is unseelie anyway?” Joe asked. Pete looked somehow more reserved, arms crossed over his chest.

            “Evil fae,” he said. “Not that they think of themselves that way, but it’s the easiest way to describe it.”

            “So, what, the fae who drugged and kidnapped us were the good ones?”

            “You think you’re joking,” Pete sighed. “What do you think it is, then?”

            “Not fae,” Joe said. “I don’t know what, but I don’t like it.”

            “Hey!”

            Joe jumped, turning around so fast the room blurred, but it was only Dirty, grinning at the both of them with his eyebrows raised.

            “What are you two doing hiding back here?” he complained. “Come on, did you know they sell Pete Wentz cardboard cutouts here? There’s one in Hawaiian get up and you’ve got to see it.”

            Dirty led them through the labyrinth of the store, past enormous figurines and a wall completely covered with an array of wigs to a section of the store filled with cardboard standees. They entertained Dirty for a while but didn’t get any shopping done. As it turned out, the store had very little to offer in terms of decorations, and since none of them were looking for costumes, they didn’t have much to do.

            In retrospect, it took Joe too long to realize that Travie wasn’t with them. Not until they were getting ready to leave did Dirty ask where he had gotten to, and Joe and Pete exchanged one fearful look before sprinting to the exit. One of them might have knocked over a display— Joe didn’t stop to check. The two of them burst out of the door into blinding daylight. Joe blinked, his eyes slowly adjusting to see Travie standing at the edge of the parking lot, a confused expression on his face, and a darkly shrouded figure rounding the corner of the building.

            “Hey, Pete, dude,” Travie called, “That thing, it looked like-”

            “Me,” Pete whispered. Joe launched himself the rest of the way out of the store and took off sprinting. He cleared the distance across the small parking lot and around the corner of the building in seconds, but there was no one there when he got out onto the street. A few people walking his direction on the other side of the street, but they were all college aged girls. Nothing that looked like Pete, no getaway cars, nothing. It was as though the figure had just disappeared.

            Joe went back to the car where the other three were standing. Travie didn’t look scared or angry, thankfully, just confused. Joe skidded up to them, frustrated.

            “It’s gone, whatever it is,” he said. “What happened?”

            “I came outside to make a call,” Travie said. “Got out here and Pete or something that looked like him was already leaning on the car. He said hey, but something was weird about him. He told me we should just get in the car and head out, but I wouldn’t. He got kinda weird. I tried asking him what was up, but I figured this was the thing you guys were talking about. I asked him to take off the sunglasses, see if there was maybe something going on with his eyes—you know how supernatural shit is—but then he got really weird. He backed away, and when I tried to take them off myself he fucking jumped. He started running away right before you got out.”

            “Okay,” Joe said. “So that’s… creepy, but not outwardly threatening.”

            Travie seemed more outwardly uncomfortable then. “Yeah, but what if I’d gotten in the car?”

            “Thank fuck you didn’t,” Pete said. “Also, sunglasses? Shaant mentioned that too, but I didn’t think it was a big thing.”

            “It’s bright out today,” Dirty pointed out.

            “Yeah, but since when do I pay attention to shit like that?” Pete asked. “It could be important.”

            “Probably is,” Travie said. “I’m telling you, he flipped over the sunglasses. What is that thing?”

            Joe and Pete exchanged another look.

            “We don’t know,” Pete said. “Let’s get back to the tour.”

            The arena in this town had the appearance of an enormous orange juicer stuck in the middle of Southern Illinois’ endless farmland. The parking lot was filling up steadily, and Dirty had a hell of a time getting them back into the back lot, even with Pete and Joe’s access passes. Leaving the venue during the day was getting to be more of a hassle with every tour.

            As soon as they got back inside, Pete was calling Ryan, but unfortunately Ryan wasn’t answering. Andy brought Carmilla backstage for once, unwilling to be too far away from her. Even with the whole band holed up in the back room, Joe still felt uneasy, like he was being watched. He couldn’t quite describe the sensation, other than he felt like there were six people breathing when there were only five people in the room.

            After the show while they were all backstage, Pete tried Ryan’s number again.

            “Clingy,” Patrick had teased, but he was too tense for the joke to really carry through. It did feel like they were sort of dependent on Ryan’s information, Joe thought, but he wasn’t having any luck researching on his own.

            Finally, Joe couldn’t take the tension in the room. He stood up, stretched, and slid on a jacket.

            “I’m going on a walk,” he said. “Anyone want to come with?”

            “Funny,” Pete said. “I wish.”

            “No,” Andy said, glancing once at Carmilla, curled up asleep on the sofa in the back room.

Patrick shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll come along. We shouldn’t go off on our own.”

            He leaned over and kissed Pete softly on the lips—seeing the two of them acting domestic together was still going to take some getting used to—and stood up as well. The two of them snuck out, ditching security as fast as they could and walking through the dark streets. The venue was next to a college campus, and the streets were still teeming with drunk students.

            “What do you think it is?” Joe asked Patrick. Patrick shrugged.

            “I don’t know,” he said. “But I think it’s related to the dreams.”

            Joe stared at Patrick, breaking stride for just a moment. “What makes you say that?”

            “We’re the only four this thing is avoiding,” Patrick said. “And the dreams are only happening to the four of us. These two things are happening at the same time and... I don’t know. It’s just— it feels too weird to be a coincidence, you know?”

            “Maybe,” Joe said. “Some type of magic, then?”

            “Maybe,” Patrick agreed. They walked past a cemetery, their surroundings quieter than they had been all night. “You know, it’s so funny, I used to avoid quiet streets at night.” Patrick said. “Scared of getting mugged or murdered or whatever. You know, the kind of shit your mom warns you about when you go to the city. I’m not scared of that anymore, though I guess I should be, right? I don’t have superpowers, so there’s nothing to stop some human with a gun from killing me, but I feel invincible to non-magic shit.”

            “You’re right,” Joe said. “You should be more careful. If you get shot all the John Lennon comparisons will be exhausting.” Patrick laughed very hard at that, though he wouldn’t explain why. He was still so human—maybe not weak, not anymore, but certainly weaker than Joe was. No need for him to get reckless.

            Their path had winded a bit to stay on the quieter streets, but now they were surrounded by streetlights. A group of twenty-somethings spilled out from a door underneath a more traditional looking marquee, lit up to say “The Canopy Club.” Joe smiled fondly at it, and Patrick elbowed him, probably having the same thought.

            “Remember when we played there?” he asked.

            “Yeah,” Joe said, feeling warmly nostalgic as well. “Man, you ever miss playing shows that small?”

            “Kinda,” Patrick said. “But I also really like not sleeping in a van with you.”

            Joe laughed along with him. They waded through the small crowd and around the corner, back onto a darker, quieter street. This stretch was more industrial, no bars or restaurants lighting up the sidewalks for a long way.

            “Hey, I’ll be right back,” Patrick said. “Gonna go piss, scream if you get attacked.”

            “So, the usual system, got it,” Joe said. Patrick flipped him off and turned back towards the bars they had just walked by. Joe leaned back against the brick wall, exhaling hugely in the hopes of expelling some of the tension still built up in his body.

            And when that didn’t work, he pulled out a cigarette. His hands were shaking in the October chill, and he dropped the first one. Joe swore loudly and leaned down to see if he could save it. He’d managed to drop his cigarette into a puddle, so he pulled a new one out of the pack instead as he straightened up. He lit it up and took a deep drag. That did a much better job of easing the tightness in his muscles, and he leaned his back against the wall again, breathing out a puff of smoke in relief.

            “Can I have a light?”

            The voice Joe heard almost directly in his ear was familiar, but he couldn’t for the life of him place it. He turned to face the man the voice belonged to, but it was too dark to see him. The man stood a little taller than Joe, but not by much. There was very little Joe could see of him, other than the breadth of his shoulders in the hazy glow from the next street over.

            “Yeah, sure man,” Joe said.

            “Can I also bum a cigarette?” the guy asked. He had a warm voice, deep and smooth and reassuring. Joe rolled his eyes.

            “Yeah, sure,” he said. He held out the pack to the man and flicked the lighter to life. The flame sparked up and illuminated the face of the man. Joe’s face.

            Joe staggered backwards, dropping the lighter in the gutter as well. The second Joe, now dimly lit by the cherry ember at the end of his cigarette, laughed.

            He looked just like Joe: thick, dark curls on top of his head, his skin pale but healthy looking in the greyish light of night. It was like looking into a mirror, except for the man’s eyes. The other Joe had flat black eyes, eyes that glistened like an oil spill from one corner to the other. There were no whites, no retinas, just black, like a black hole, like the darkness of the night around him.

            “Always nice getting to socialize while you smoke, right?” the other Joe said. He took a deep drag, and chuckled again. “S’pose I should introduce myself. I’m Joe. Joe Trohman.”

            “Likewise,” Joe said. He felt paralyzed with fear, but he was happy to find that his voice was still there. “You. Are you the thing that’s been following us?”

            “Sort of,” the other Joe said. “I’m a shapeshifter.”

            “You’ve been listening to us,” Joe said.

            “Oh, more than listening,” Other Joe said. Joe could have imagined it, but he thought he saw a gleam in the shapeshifter’s eyes, a mirthful glint. “I know you inside and out, Joe, know your hopes and fears better than you do. I know what you look like underneath your skin, the weakness and rot you try to hide, know what bruised parts of your soul have already turned necrotic. But to answer your question yes, I know what you’ve been talking about.”

            Joe stared at the other him. His heart was either beating very fast or not at all, and he couldn’t tell which.

            “Uh-huh,” he said. “Well, this is, um, enlightening, but I should go.”

            “Running back to your friends?” Other Joe asked. “Don’t worry, we’ll let the whole band in on the party soon enough. We thought you would find us quicker, but it seems we overestimated your intelligence.”

            “We?” Joe asked. Other Joe scowled, his face turned thunderous as he must have realized he’d said too much. Then Joe heard Patrick’s voice.

            “Hey, dude, you still out here?” Patrick called. “Who’s your friend?”

            “Patrick, run,” Joe said, his voice very even. Patrick froze, eyes dark. His hand flew to the knife strapped to his hip, bless him, but the other Joe had already turned around.

            “No, Patrick,” he said, stepping forward. “Why don’t you stay awhile?”

            “Joe?!” Patrick said, his voice thick with alarm. Before Joe could summon the will to move, to help, to do anything, Other Joe had lurched forward and slammed Patrick into the wall. Patrick let out a terrible scream. Joe smelled the singed flesh before he saw the cigarette in the shapeshifter’s hand pressed against Patrick’s shoulder, put out on his skin.

            Joe started to run forward, but Patrick beat him to it and kicked Other Joe as hard as he could, knocking him into the street. They didn’t even have to look at one another before the two of them took off at a dead sprint, leaving the creature behind them along with the smell of burnt skin.

***

            Patrick was still not a big fan of the constant running involved in his job. It looked sort of cool in old music documentaries, all glamorous shots of bands laughing as they ran from crowds of screaming girls. Of course, maybe this would be more fun if he were running from fans rather than a monster that looked like an exact copy of Joe.

            He and the real Joe had run down the dark street without even having to discuss it. Patrick’s initial thought process was mostly a wordless shout of alarm, but once his head was clear, he was grateful they had run away from any potential bystanders. There was no need for anyone else to get hurt, or for anyone to catch sight of what might as well be Joe Trohman randomly attacking people on the street.

            Patrick was already gasping for breath when Joe started tugging him across the street. He had a stitch in his side like someone had stabbed him in the ribs. On the other side of the road was a tunnel exuding orange light that looked like it led to an underground parking garage. Hopefully that was a place where they could hide for a minute or two. Patrick tried to put on a new burst of speed, but Joe still outran him by far, and the tightness in Patrick’s chest was threatening to make him collapse in the middle of the road. Even still, he thought he had never run so fast before, which made it all the more disappointing when he felt arms wrap around him from behind and pull him up short.

            Patrick did scream, but when Joe turned around he managed to get ahold of his fear for a moment.

            “Keep running!” Patrick shouted. This thing, this not-Joe, was holding him up off the ground, and Patrick was flailing in an attempt to break free of its grip. Joe nodded and disappeared into the parking garage, and Patrick twisted his body violently enough that he broke free, falling ass-first onto the asphalt. He scrambled backwards, and the not-Joe just smiled at him.

            “Pleased to meet you, Patrick,” not-Joe said, its voice smooth and pleasant. “I feel like I already know you so intimately, though we’ve never met. Such a fascinating person you are, such a glutton for proving yourself no matter how much pain it puts you in.”

            Not-Joe knelt down blindingly fast, its face suddenly inches from Patrick’s. Even in the dark, Patrick could clearly see the deep black pools of its eyes, endless and empty. The thing smiled, its smile just a little too wide to be human. As the inhuman smile spread, Patrick swallowed back another scream that threatened to rise up in the back of his throat.

            “I’m going to have a lot of fun with you,” the thing said. It was so close Patrick could feel its breath. He was blinded by the bright white smile, and though it wasn’t holding him, though he knew he had to move to escape, he was frozen to the ground. Everything about this double was so viscerally wrong and uncanny. A twisted, warped version of something he was supposed to trust.

            “I’m going to have fun burning you,” it whispered.

            Before Patrick could push himself to his feet and stagger backward, the thing pulled something silvery out of its pocket. There was a flash of light, an ear-splitting bang, and Joe screamed behind him.

            Patrick turned his head to see Joe on his knees, one hand cupped to his shoulder. Then he looked back up to the thing. It was blowing smoke off the muzzle of a gun. Joe’s flintlock pistol; Patrick recognized it.

            “That’s mine,” Joe growled from behind Patrick. His voice was thick with pain. The thing just laughed and tucked the gun away.

            “Finders keepers,” not-Joe said lightly. “Now-”

            Whatever it meant to say, it didn’t get to finish it. Patrick had taken advantage of its attention on Joe to draw his knife and slash the creature. He cut deep, not caring whether he injured or killed it, just wanting to buy enough time to get away. He dragged the knife through flesh and cloth, cutting over its stomach. Then, Patrick quickly pulled himself to his feet and ran towards the real Joe. He stopped to help Joe up, pulling his arm over his shoulders and then they half-ran, half-limped down into the parking garage.

            The thing behind them was roaring in pain or anger or both, but Patrick didn’t waste any time turning around to see. He and Joe ran down two floors and then Joe pointed out an elevator bank. Patrick smashed all of the elevator buttons— up, down, it didn’t matter as long as it was sealed and away from that thing.

            The elevator came before the creature did, and the two of them fell into it, Joe slamming the “Door Close” button dozens of times as the doors slowly sealed shut. Then it was quiet, no noise but the sound of the two of them breathing.

            “Are you—?” Patrick stopped himself. Joe was soaking him with blood, which was steadily running out of his shoulder wound. His face was ice white and he looked scared and out of control in a way Patrick never had seen him. He was absolutely not okay, and Patrick didn’t want to waste time asking stupid questions. “What was the bullet made of?”

            Joe gulped, his breathing shallow. “Not silver,” he gasped at last. “Iron, so it hurts like shit, but it’s not silver. I’ll be okay once we get it out.”

            Patrick stared at the tiny bullet hole that was leaking blood. “I don’t have any tweezers with me.”

            Joe let out a hysterical gasp of laughter.

            “Me either,” he said. He was still breathing in tiny little gasps that didn’t convince Patrick that he was getting enough air. “Fuck. Fuck!” Joe punched the wall, and the elevator started rising. He gripped Patrick’s arm, and Patrick shook his head.

            “Hey, hey, come on, it’s just going up, it could be anything,” Patrick said. “Anyone could’ve called it. Deep breaths.”

            Joe gave him a disparaging look.

            “Deep breaths?” he repeated. “Deep fucking breaths?”

            “Not to stress you out more, but you either need to calm down and put my jacket on over yours or get ready for a paparazzi filled hospital visit,” Patrick said. Joe pushed himself away from Patrick and shed his own jacket with some difficulty.

            Patrick had just finished covering up the bullet hole as best he could when the elevator doors opened. They were met not by the horrific double, but by a small crowd of elderly white people dressed in suits and expensive dresses. Patrick smiled and nodded at them.

            “Pardon us,” he murmured, and he led Joe past them into a high-ceilinged wooden entrance hall. It looked a lot fancier than the rest of the campus they had wandered around, but it was well lit. Patrick wasn’t in the habit of endangering bystanders when he could avoid it, but they needed a minute to recuperate.

            “Bathroom,” Joe said, jerking his head towards a sign. Patrick shook his head.

            “No, bad idea.”

            “Bad idea? I’ve got a fucking bullet in my shoulder!”

            “Keep your voice down! There’s a line coming out of there— are you just gonna slice your wound open bigger and dig in with your fingers in front of everyone?”

            Joe gave Patrick a pitiful, pleading look.

            “I won’t be any good in a fight like this,” he said.

            “Leave it up to me for a minute,” Patrick said. “Come on.” The two of them walked over to what looked like a closed cafe area that was roped off from the rest of the hall. Patrick ducked under the velvet rope surrounding the area and pulled out his cell phone. Thankfully, the phone only rang once before Pete picked up.

            “Patrick! Hey, I was just about to call you guys, Ryan said that—”

            “It’s here,” Patrick said, words tumbling out in a rush. “That—that thing, that whatever-it-is, it looks like Joe and it found us and it’s pretty fucking violent and Joe’s been shot, can you pick us up?”

            “Shot?!” Pete shouted.

            “Yes,” Patrick said, “And I don’t know how much time I bought in slashing the thing because I don’t know what it is, so hurry here with a car and weapons and a first aid kit.”

            “I—shit, okay, where are you?”

            “Um,” Patrick looked around. Joe shrugged. “I don’t know? We were by the Canopy Club when we first ran into the thing and we started running. We’re in a big building, some kind of concert hall, I think.”

            There was some shuffling on the other line, and after a moment, Pete said “Krannert?”

            “Maybe,” Patrick said. “Is that a big ass concert hall with an underground parking garage near the Canopy Club?”

            “Yes,” Pete said emphatically. “Hang tight, we’re on our way.”

            “Pete, wait!” Patrick said. He didn’t realize until now how much he didn’t want Pete to hang up, how much he wanted to keep hearing his voice. Some of the adrenaline coursing through him was starting to fade and Patrick felt his hands shaking. “Um. Hurry, I guess. And remember, it looks like Joe, but it isn’t him. The eyes are all wrong.”

            “Eyes?”

            “They’re black.”

            Pete was quiet for a moment, then said “We’re on our way.” The line went dead.

            “So now what?” Joe asked in a hushed tone. “This place is clearing out, and security’s gonna kick us out eventually, aren’t they?”

            “Shit, probably,” Patrick said. “Or as soon as they notice we’re dripping blood. We’re pretty secluded now, do you want me to look at your shoulder?”

            Joe glared.

            “Do you have tweezers now?” he asked mockingly. “Or a medical degree I don’t know about?”

            “No, but I thought I could at least wrap it up in case we have to run again,” Patrick said. His own shoulder ached too, the burn throbbing viciously now that he had slowed down enough to feel it. Though the wounds were far from comparable, Patrick could feel what he suspected to be either blood or plasma oozing out of the burn, and the sensation was nauseating.

            Guilt rushed over him in waves as Joe peeled back the layers of his clothes to reveal the bleeding bullet wound. He should have gotten away faster, fought back better so that Joe wouldn’t have had to turn back in the first place. He had to stop himself from thinking too much about what he should have done; there would be plenty more time for wallowing in guilt later but he had to do something to help Joe first. In that moment, he tore the sleeve off of Joe’s old jacket and tied it as best he could around the wound. It wasn’t a great job, but it was probably better than nothing.

            “We have to get out of here,” Joe said. He was breathing heavily, and Patrick hated the idea of them trying to run again like this, but he nodded.

            “We can try and wait a minute for Pete and Andy to show up,” he said, but Joe was shaking his head before Patrick finished.

            “No, listen— that thing knows where we are,” he said. Patrick felt suddenly chilled.

            “Why do you think that?” he asked.

            “Because I was dead fucking quiet going back to you,” Joe said. “He couldn’t have heard me, he wasn’t even looking at me, but he shot and hit me with perfect accuracy without even aiming. I mean, how do you explain that?”

            “I don’t know,” Patrick admitted. “But we’re probably as safe in here as anywhere else, even if it knows where we are.”

            “What about Pete and Andy?” Joe asked. Patrick’s stomach flipped over.

            “Should we warn them?” he asked.

            “I think we should get to them before this thing does,” Joe said. Patrick nodded, then pulled a woman aside as she was leaving, asking where the main entrance was. She pointed to a door opposite the elevator Patrick and Joe had taken, and he went to help Joe up. Together, they walked quickly to the exit.

            Outside, the world was too quiet and too dark. Patrick felt more exposed than ever, facing of the huge stone staircase descending to street level. At least no one was staring at them out there. It was abnormally cold for early October, and Patrick slid on the remains of Joe’s hoodie, which now only had one arm. It looked horrible, but it kept him just a little bit warmer.

            “We shouldn’t stay still,” Joe said, shaking his head. Patrick stared at him in disbelief, but Joe was resolute. “That thing is going to find us if we stay in one place.”

            “Where else do we go?” Patrick asked. Joe looked around and pointed to the road.

            “Down the stairs, at least,” he said. Patrick hurried down the stairs with him, sometimes flying down two or three stone steps at a time in his hurry to get away, get moving somewhere.

            When the two of them reached the bottom and there was still no car in sight, Patrick was ready to suggest they start wandering back in the direction they had come from, but then he saw a figure running down the sidewalk towards them.

            “Guys!” he heard Andy call. “I ran ahead, what’s up?”

            Patrick remained frozen. It sounded like Andy, sort of, but this voice was different too. It wasn’t the same way not-Joe’s voice had been different—it was deeper this time. And he couldn’t see Andy’s face.

            “What’s going on?” he asked again, his voice clear and too low, his face obscured by shadow. Patrick drew his knife again, holding it out in front of him warily.

            “Step into the light,” he called. Laughter echoed down the empty street.

            “You’re a bit smarter than you look, aren’t you?” the thing asked with its version of Andy’s voice. It stepped forward, walking towards the two of them at a steady pace. From a distance, Patrick saw it: similar to Andy but too tall, covered in more tattoos, and having those empty black eyes.

            “That isn’t saying much,” the thing said. “But it’s still better than someone would expect.”

            “Patrick,” Joe’s voice was low and pleading. “Patrick, we have to-”

            “And how’s my favorite shitty alpha doing?” not-Andy asked. It was still striding forward, not running, but not slowing either. “Have you realized you couldn’t keep a flea under your care without killing it?”

            “What are you?” Joe asked.

            Not-Andy stepped up right in front of them. It smiled just like not-Joe, its lips stretching just a little too far and its smile just too wide to be human.

            “I’m Andy,” it said. “Andy Hurley. But better.”

            It lashed out then, knocking both Joe and Patrick to the ground, separating them from one another. It slammed its fist down across Patrick’s cheek with a force that sent tremors through Patrick’s whole body. Patrick gasped, but before he could take in enough air he felt another blow, this one to his ribcage, knocking all the air out of his lungs. Patrick curled in on himself on the sidewalk but forced himself to open his eyes. He looked up just in time to see that not-Andy was about to bring his foot down on Patrick’s leg. He rolled out of the way, dragging himself back to his feet.

            Patrick’s knife had gotten knocked aside, so he simply punched not-Andy as hard as he could in the face. To his great surprise, his punch knocked the thing off balance and sent it stumbling backwards. Patrick re-balanced himself on the balls of his feet and ran at not-Andy, kicking it as hard as he could in the stomach, forcing it to fall to the ground.

            “Joe?” Patrick called, turning around. His vision was a little blurry. He could see Joe sprawled out on the ground, but couldn’t make out any details of him, not his face or clothes or any worsening of blood spreading across his clothes.

            “Fine,” Joe croaked. “’m fine, watch out behind you!”

            Patrick turned and just barely ducked a blow to his head, throwing a punch at random that, by some good luck, managed to catch not-Andy in the sternum and knock him back a foot or two. Not-Andy spat out blood on the side of the road, its face twisted up in pure rage. It didn’t look human, and Patrick couldn’t figure out what was wrong, but _something_ was wrong. It wasn’t human, wasn’t normal, shouldn’t exist, and every part of him recoiled from the thing’s existence.

            “You’re kinda getting on my nerves, Ricky,” not-Andy said. “I think my counterpart should’ve drained you like a juicebox when he had the chance, little bloodslut. Would’ve spared the rest of us a lot of trouble.”

            The words hit Patrick a little, more by way of the terrible memories than anything else. Even so, as not-Andy spoke, Patrick snatched his knife off the ground and brandished it.

            “Stay away from us,” he said. Not-Andy grinned its horrible grin again.

            “Or what?” it asked.

            Patrick charged forwards and sank the knife into the thing’s chest. Not-Andy gasped, staring up at Patrick with black eyes as it sank to its knees. It cocked its head, shuddering with its whole body, then suddenly ripped itself backwards, pulling off of the knife.

            Blood splattered the sidewalks, dripping red where they had fought.

            “You’ll live to regret that,” not-Andy said, and then fled from them at a staggering run. Patrick swiped his knife along his jeans to get the worst of the blood off, then fell down on his knees next to Joe.

            “Oh Jesus, oh fuck,” he whispered. Joe was half-curled in on himself, his breath shallow and blood still coming out from the wound in spite of the makeshift bandage. “Christ, Joe, you’re—”

            “I know,” Joe said through gritted teeth.

            “This isn’t an iron bullet,” Patrick guessed flatly. Joe shook his head.

            “Iron-silver blend, but I didn’t think you needed to worry,” he said, taking in sharp gasps of breath. “Fuck, I have come too far to die in fucking Illinois.”

            “No one is dying,” Patrick said. He pressed his hands down on the wound, pressing down as hard as he could. Joe cried out, but Patrick pressed his whole weight into it nonetheless.

            “Are you trying to kill me faster?” Joe screamed.

            “Shut up! I’m putting pressure on it!” Patrick yelled back. His own breathing was labored and his chest ached, whether from sharing Joe’s pain through their pack bond or from the kick in the ribs he’d just gotten.

            They weren’t on the ground long before a car skidded up to them, and Pete’s voice washed over Patrick like hot tea, a warm blanket, familiar and comforting even in his panic.

            “Shit, fuck, _guys!_ ” Pete cried. Suddenly, doubt seized Patrick, and he jumped to his feet again, ignoring the protest in his whole body as he did so. He held up his knife, shaking.

            “Turn the light on and show me your faces!” he shouted.

            “Patrick, get him in the car so we can—”

            “Show me your fucking eyes!” Patrick shouted. The interior light of the car came on, illuminating Pete, Andy, and Dirty staring at him with wide, horrified, normal eyes. Brown and blue irises, whites, and blown pupils. Patrick dropped his knife in the gutter, almost collapsing with relief.

            “You’re all you?” he asked. Rather than answering, Andy got out and opened the car door. He pulled Joe into the car, and Patrick realized Pete was tugging him in as well. Patrick scooped up his knife and had enough presence of mind to pull the door shut as he got in.

            “What the fuck happened?” Pete shouted, but Patrick’s eyes were closed and he wasn’t sure who Pete was yelling at. When no one responded, Patrick made a noise in the back of his throat that he hoped indicated “give me a minute.”

            “It looked like Joe,” Patrick said. “‘Cept for the eyes. Black eyes. And it shot him. There was silver—!”

            “Got it,” Andy said softly, and Patrick was overwhelmingly relieved to hear real voice. “He should heal in a second, Patrick, don’t worry.”

            “We got inside,” Patrick said. “And when we came out to wait for you it looked like Andy.”

            “How’s your chest?” Joe asked. Patrick lifted his shirt up to look. He half-expected a cartoony imprint of a thick shoe print on his chest, but of course, there was only the pinkish first stage of what was sure to be a hell of a bruise. The cigarette burn was black and ugly too, and he had a few scrapes on his sides he didn’t even remember, probably from falling on the asphalt. Pete inhaled sharply and grabbed Patrick’s arm, but it wasn’t as bad as Patrick had thought.

            Patrick inhaled deeply, trying to take stock of how it felt when he did. He felt a sharp stab of pain in the lower right side of ribs, but he could live with it. So long as he didn’t inhale too deeply.

            “Baby,” Pete said, and Patrick winced. Pete’s power of aura reading was a lot more convenient when they weren’t in the middle of something, and Patrick shook his head.

            “Cracked at worst,” he said. “I can hardly feel it, I was just testing to see how bad it was.”

            “Fuck,” Joe said. The one word seemed to convey a lot: resignation, awe, disgust, residual fear. “Fucker did a number on us.”

            “Yeah, well,” Patrick pulled his shirt back down. “I stabbed the damn thing the second time, maybe that’ll slow it down. What’d you want to tell us, Pete?”

            “Nothing now,” Pete said. “We were just working on theories, but those theories centered on it not being able to touch anyone, so it looks like they’re out the window.”

            “So now what?” Joe asked. “Do we get the fuck out of Dodge, or wait around and see if we can finish this thing off?”

            “Finish it off,” Andy said, to Patrick’s surprise. He sounded venomous and ready for a fight in a way that was atypical of Andy. “It doesn’t have the element of surprise anymore and I want it dead.”

            “It wasn’t that hard to fight,” Patrick said. “I was holding my own. We just didn’t expect it to have a fucking gun.”

            “We do now,” Andy said. “So let’s go back to the venue and wait for this thing to come back.”

            “We’ll have to send the bus on ahead of us,” Pete said, his voice quiet and almost toneless.

            “We can do that,” Joe said. Patrick slowly pushed over towards Pete, leaning his head on Pete’s shoulder. He slowly let the tension drift out of his body as Pete ran his fingers through his hair. It might have been a little too much, like an annoying PDA couple making out in the halls at high school, but it felt nice to be comforted.

            So he curled a little bit closer to Pete. Pete wasn’t exactly going to protect him with brute strength, but it felt better being close to him. Dirty looked anxious in the front seat.

            “If this thing can touch people then… do you think it already has?” he asked. “I mean, shit, if it can look like anyone in the band… there’s a lot of girls out there who—”

            “Not now,” Pete said tightly. “Please, just—just don’t.”

            “I don’t think so, anyway,” Joe said. “He wouldn’t let Travie touch him, and why not? I think there’s more to this that we’re not seeing.”

            The drive to the venue only took a few minutes but getting back through the scant remains of security took a bit longer. As they made their way back into the massive complex, Pete got on the phone with someone, speaking in a hushed voice about buses.

            “Do we have weapons?” Patrick asked.

            “Yeah,” Andy said.

            “Not my gun, though,” Joe said sourly. “That bastard has it, so be careful.”

            “How many bullets did you have?” Patrick asked.

            “It only loads one at a time, but I’ve got boxes full of them. Guess there’s no way of knowing how much he took,” Joe said. “Still, it’s a showy piece of shit. Takes a long time to reload.”

            “Which I’m sure will be a great comfort when one of us is bleeding out,” Patrick said. “Was anything else missing?”

            “Well, I’m assuming you brought your knives with you?” Andy guessed. Patrick felt a minor chill through his body. He was already afraid, but it seemed like each new piece of news hit a little harder.

            “One,” Patrick said. “Are they both gone?”

            “Oh, fantastic,” Andy groaned. “So, it has a knife too.”

            Pete hung up and turned to face the rest of them. His face was drawn and tired looking, but there was a stubbornness and readiness to fight that matched what Patrick felt.

            “So, what do we have?”

            “The usual: swords, your godawful Indiana Jones whip, a battle axe and a crossbow, for some reason.”

            “It’s a miracle we ever get through customs with all this shit,” Joe said. “I’ll take the crossbow, if that’s cool. I owe this fucker a long-range takedown.”

            “What’s the plan?” Pete asked.

            “We’re holing up somewhere in the venue with the least amount of breakable things and waiting,” Joe said. “I think that thing can find us, so there’s no point tracking it down.”

            “Why do you think it can find us?” Pete asked.

            “Intuition?” Joe shrugged. “I don’t know. Something Patrick said. I think it’s connected to the four of us?”

            “How?”

            “If I knew how, we’d be done with this already,” Joe said. The car rolled to a slow stop right in front of the service entrance. The assembly hall was desolate, all the fans and security and crew gone for the night. Patrick had lost track of time while he and Joe were out, and he realized by the greenish glow of the dashboard clock that it was past three in the morning.

            “Let’s kill this thing and get out of here,” Joe said. He got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him. Apparently, the wound in his shoulder was already healing just fine. Dirty cast a worried look into the backseat before following him.

            After Andy got out, Pete caught Patrick’s shoulder.

            “Is he okay?” Pete asked. “Joe, I mean. He’s acting kinda...” He didn’t finish the sentence.

            “He’s freaked,” Patrick admitted. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You’ll get it when you see it.”

            The five of them walked back into the venue. It was closed for the evening, but Andy made short work of breaking one of the padlocks off in his hand before leading them all inside. The emergency lights were dim and few in number, but they were enough to see by. Their footsteps echoed through the halls as they walked unhurriedly through the empty place. Rather than holstering his knife, Patrick held it tightly in his hand. His chest was throbbing but having a mission to focus on gave him enough to worry about that he couldn’t really think of his injuries.

            There was no need to walk too closely together without a crowd or a conversation to keep up, but the distance made Patrick nervous.

            “Kinda makes you jumpy, being in here after dark, huh?” Pete’s voice said from behind him. Patrick laughed, and even opened his mouth to reply, but then he saw Pete a good five feet ahead of him.

            Patrick opened his mouth to shout, but before any noise could come out there was a hand pressed down on his mouth. He spun around with his knife out, but Pete—not Pete, most definitely NOT Pete smashed his free hand into Patrick’s wrist. The knife fell to the floor.

            “Hey there, sweetie,” not-Pete said. “What, did I startle you?”

            Not-Pete was hard to mistake for the real Pete now that Patrick was looking at him. He was taller than Patrick, not by an inch or two but by almost half a foot. He had an easy, leering grin, the sort of schoolyard bully expression that made him look like he was about to kick someone’s teeth in. His hair was the same, if a little longer and glossier. His skin was pale, and his black eyes were even more intense in the dim lighting.

            Patrick pulled backwards out of not-Pete’s grasp, then punched the thing in the face.

            Not-Pete stumbled back, and Patrick shook out his aching hand. It felt like he’d broken it. Meanwhile, the thing was swearing in Pete’s voice.

            “IT’S BACK HERE!” Patrick shouted. The not-Pete snarled at him, suddenly animalistic, and launched forward, knocking Patrick onto his back.

            Not-Pete crawled on top of him, pinning Patrick's wrists to the ground. A snarling sound was coming out of his chest as he jammed his knee into Patrick's chest, directly on the rib that felt more like a loose tooth than a bone. Patrick gasped in pain and the creature that looked so much like Pete grinned, looking giddy.

            “I'm about to be temporarily dispensed with,” he said, leaning in far too close to Patrick’s face. “But first I want you to know that blood on your skin is a lovely look for you, and that I look forward to spending some time alone with you.”

            No sooner had he finished his sentence did Patrick see him get kicked off of himself. Pete's foot sailed just above Patrick's face, kicking the thing in the head. Like a soccer ball, if kicking soccer balls gave off almighty crunching sounds like that just had. Hysterical giggles rose up in Patrick's throat. Pete had kicked someone's head like he was punting a fucking soccer ball.

            Patrick sat up then stood up, his chest loudly protesting the movement. Not-Pete had landed in a heap a good ten feet back, and his Pete was cackling.

            “Oh, MAN!” Pete cried. “Oh, that was awesome. That was cathartic as shit. I never realized just how much I wanted to kick myself in the fucking nose before today.”

            Pete took Patrick's arm and helped him stand straight, all of them staring at the slack figure.

            “Did you kill him?” Dirty asked, voice shaky.

            “Not quite,” Pete's voice came from the thing, standing up and smiling its terrible smile at them. His nose was crumpled flat against his face, but he pulled it straight again with a wet crunch. His nose then looked fine, but there were still twin lines of blood running down over his mouth.

            “Aw, what's this?” not-Pete asked. “You boys look scared shitless. All because of me?” He took a step forward and Patrick took a tiny step backwards before he could even think about it. At least everyone moved with him, either flinching or stepping back. Not-Pete took another step forward, let his face go completely blank and empty. “Boo.”

            He lashed out with something in one hand, and Patrick ducked. Something grazed the top of his head, but the thing was too slow. Unusually slow for a monster. When Patrick brought himself back up to his full height again, he saw his long-bladed knife in not-Pete’s hand, and a smirk on his face.

            Joe shot forward, moving far faster than the monster. He pinned him to the wall with ease, knocking the knife to the ground.

            “Cute,” Joe said. “Now where’s my fucking gun?”

            “Don’t have it,” not-Pete said coolly. “Why would I?”

            “I saw you with it earlier,” Joe said. “Where did it go?”

            “Did you see Joe with it earlier?” not-Pete asked. For someone pinned to a wall and at the mercy of a werewolf, he looked too calm—almost bored.

            “Yes,” Joe said curtly. “We saw you.”

            “Well, I imagine he still has it,” not-Pete said. “I’m Pete, Pete Wentz, since apparently you can’t see me clearly. Why would I have Joe’s gun?”

            The realization of what he meant descended suddenly and terribly on Patrick. Dirty and the rest of his band still looked confused. This was too horrible, it made too much sense.

            “You’re not a shapeshifter,” Patrick said. The creature smiled directly at him, sending shivers through Patrick’s body.

            “Well, you’re a bit smarter than your friends, but it’s still painfully clear that you dragged yourself through the high school graduation line by the skin of your teeth, isn’t it? I absolutely am a shapeshifter. Do you want to see?”

            Patrick couldn’t even say no before the thing started changing under Joe’s hands. The creature looked like melting wax for a moment, hard for Patrick to watch as it lost its shape before regaining it.

            Joe was still pinning not-Pete to the wall, but now he looked young, younger than Patrick had ever seen him, and as short as the real Pete, his hair long and unfashionable, his skin unhealthily pale, and eyes shadowed by purple rings. He was actively shaking, looked like he was about to cry, and Patrick had the sudden urge to run forward and knock Joe off of him, before he looked at the black eyes again.

            “No, you didn’t,” not-Pete said. His voice was different again: younger and more vulnerable. Patrick wasn’t sure who he was talking to, because not-Pete was staring at the floor. “You never really left me behind. You can’t.”

            He changed again, melting upwards and growing taller again, taller than before. He grew long and stretched until he towered several inches over Joe. His stretched bones and pale skin made him look skeletal, and his grin started to spread again. It was just a too wide grin, someone faking a huge smile, but then it kept getting bigger. The corners of his lips pulled up past his cheekbones, all of his teeth visible. It was monstrous, and this time Joe did drop him, stepping backwards with clear revulsion. This was the sort of monster Patrick had expected, six feet tall and made of nothing but bones and papery-skin.

            “Want to see what other shapes I can take, lover?” the thing asked Patrick, a double-timbre version of Pete’s voice that rang around the inside of Patrick’s skull. This time he shook his head fast, and the creature tipped its head to the side.

            “Tell me, do I scare you?” he said. “Don’t lie.”

            “Yes,” Patrick said. “But I think I should scare you more.”

            Patrick walked up to the creature. The whole band converged on it, walling it off from any escape. “Give me one good reason not to kill you now.”

            Not-Pete just grinned at him, like he knew something Patrick didn’t. This had been too easy, Patrick knew. Something was about to go very very wrong.

            On cue, the hall went pitch black. All the lights popped and faded, and Pete’s laughter echoed all around them.

            “Guys?” Patrick cried. He could hear footsteps and rustling and what could have been the soft thump of skin on skin from fighting, but he could see nothing. He stretched his hands out to either side, but there was no one around him anymore.

            Patrick stepped forward to see if he could get his hands on not-Pete, to hold him down so he couldn’t slip away, but there was no one there either. It was so dark that Patrick may as well have been blind. His breathing became shallow as he spun round, trying to sense something that would give him a clue of what was going on.

            “GUYS?” Patrick yelled louder.

            “Patrick!” Dirty shouted. Patrick stumbled towards his voice until he ran into someone. He grabbed for Dirty’s hand and wrapped his fingers around the other man’s forearm, but at least there was someone.

            “Dirty, what the fuck is going on?” Patrick asked.

            “I don’t know, I thought I heard fighting, but I can’t—”

            With another crackle of electricity, all of the lights came back on, blindingly bright. Patrick and Dirty had found their way into the middle of the hall, where they were encircled. Patrick first saw Pete right in front of him, not-Pete behind him with one arm wrapped around Pete’s waist, holding him still, and one hand clapped over his mouth, keeping him from making noise. Pete’s eyes were huge with fear, and when Patrick spun around, he saw Joe held in the same position by not-Joe. When he continued turning he saw Andy held captive by not-Andy. His stomach sank.

            “We are shapeshifters, Patrick,” not-Joe said with a smile. “Emphasis on ‘we’.”

            Patrick couldn’t even step back this time—there was nowhere to go, no place he could run. He and Dirty stood back to back, slowly turning to face the three sets. Dirty didn’t even have a decent weapon. Hell, he probably didn’t have a weapon at all.

            “There’s definitely a joke about how we’re just carbon copy musicians in here,” Patrick said. It was weak banter, but he needed to buy himself time.

            “Who will you save, Patrick?” Andy asked softly, but when Patrick spun around, it was not-Andy speaking. “The one you love the most? Or someone else? Out of guilt or strategy, either way.”

            Patrick narrowed his gaze on the two Andy’s. The tall, black-eyed one was still breathing heavily, and Patrick could see a hint of discoloration on his t-shirt behind Andy’s chest. He was still injured from the fight earlier.

            “Kick him in the chest, Andy,” Patrick said. Andy moved as soon as he spoke, and Patrick spun to face Pete. With abnormally good aim he threw the knife just above his Pete’s shoulder, sticking it blade first into not-Pete’s shoulder. Still turning, he dove towards the two Joe’s and knocked them both backwards. The second Patrick felt his fingers close around the cold metal of the gun, he yanked it hard and pulled it close to his chest.

            It wasn’t actually a hard fight.

            Once they weren’t being held anymore and the gun was out of the way, the band could hold their own. Joe slammed not-Joe’s head down onto the tile floor, crunching sickeningly and raising a horrible scream from the creature that sounded just like him. Andy threw his double across the hall, causing it to crash into a wall. With Joe’s gun in hand, Patrick ran to help Pete. He appeared to be doing just fine on his own in a mundane fistfight, but he could still use some help. When Pete stumbled backwards from a hit, Patrick slammed the butt of the gun down on not-Pete’s head, dazing him and knocking him back.

            “Nice hit,” Pete said, panting.

            “Anytime,” Patrick said.

            Injured and bloody, the three doubles started running. Patrick glanced around to make sure everyone was on their feet, then he started running after them.

            “This is weird,” Joe said. They were in pursuit of the doubles, Patrick running while Joe and Andy jogged lightly, flaunting their unfair super powered advantage. “I mean, once he didn’t have a gun, that wasn’t a hard fight.”

            “Same with mine,” Andy said. “They were injured, though.”

            “Yeah, I know, but that’s the other thing. Did you notice that their blood smelled—?”

            “They went outside,” Dirty said, sounding tense. Patrick knew that fighting was not so much Dirty’s thing. There was blood spattered on his t-shirt, and he looked pale. Soon, they were out of the building again, and they ran into the dark parking lot. Grass surrounded the parking lot on all sides, and the dew forming on the lawn glittered dimly in the floodlights.

            The three doubles had stopped running and were standing in a line facing the band. They looked like they were barely standing, though. Not-Andy was clutching his chest, leaning on not-Pete. Not-Pete’s nose was still bleeding steadily, even if it wasn’t crooked anymore. Not-Joe had a huge gash on his forehead, and they all looked shaky at best.

            It was odd, Patrick thought, Joe was right. Most of the magical creatures he had dealt with so far had some kind of healing factor, but these things were worn ragged. The three of them probably wouldn’t stand another round with Patrick on his own, much less him with Pete and Andy and Joe and Dirty. If Patrick’s experience was anything to go by, they should have just gotten angrier, but instead they were close to finishing them off.

            And then there was the other fear, the fear that Patrick didn’t want to address because to think of it was to jinx it, to ask for the worst. Even so, Patrick couldn’t help but wonder. _Where was his?_

            “Patrick already asked, but I’ll give you one more chance,” Joe called. There was still a good twenty feet between the two groups, but Joe or Andy could clear that space in an instant. “Give us a reason not to kill you.”

            “Only one?” not-Joe asked. _No lisp_ , Patrick realized. That was what was wrong with his voice, it was completely smooth. “Alright, how about the fact that you’ll forever be traumatized by killing someone that looks like one of your pack members? Or yourself, that’ll suck too. Or, if it doesn’t, it’ll ruin somebody else’s day when you dream about it.”

            “How do you know about the dreams?” Joe asked, keeping his face impressively blank as he spoke.

            “I already told you,” not-Joe spoke with a small smile that didn’t reach his black eyes. “I’m in your head. You have no idea how much.”

            While he was speaking, Patrick slid the gun back into Joe’s hands, hoping that it was surreptitious.

            “Huh,” Joe said. “Compelling argument, but I won’t lose any sleep over you.”

            He raised the gun up and shot in the same moment. Not-Joe twisted to get out of the way, but he still fell to the ground with a cry of pain so familiar it took all of Patrick’s willpower not to run forward, to try and help.

            The fight broke out again, but it was barely a fight. The three doubles were on the asphalt, bleeding, too injured to go on, when not-Pete started laughing.

            “What’s so fucking funny?” Joe asked. He was cold, unfeeling, in full battle mode as he loomed over the thing that looked so much like Pete.

            “You don’t get it yet, do you?” he said. “I heard you wondering.” He pointed one shaking finger at his skull. He was terrifying even out of commission, manic and giggling, bleeding out while a smile crept across his face, almost reaching his flat black eyes. Just looking at him revulsed Patrick so strongly he thought he might vomit.

            “No, Andy gets it,” not-Andy said softly. He turned to face Andy. “You know what we are, don’t you?”

            Andy gulped. Patrick turned to him, confused. Andy looked down as he spoke.

            “You’re what we want to be,” he said, his voice barely audible. “You look how we want to look and sound how we want to sound and—and you’re human.”

            Patrick felt his blood turn to ice, crack, and then disappear entirely. Fear coursed through him so fast that he almost fell over.

            “What did you say?” he said, meeting Andy’s eyes. It was a struggle to get him looking at Patrick.

            “Their blood, it’s human,” Andy said. “They’re weaker fighters because they’re human. Like I want to be.”

            It was probably an emotional moment for the rest of the band. It was probably painful to come to terms with their self-consciousness dragged out in front of everyone to see. Later Patrick would have time to feel bad for not being more tactful. But then, in that moment, all he could feel was terror and a bitter undercurrent of shame.

            “We have to go,” he said, taking hold of Andy’s arm with one hand and trying to grab Pete with the other. None of them would look at him.

            “HEY!” he shouted. “We have to go! Now!”

            “Patrick gets it,” not-Pete said in a sing-song. “Poor, pitiful, human Patrick gets it. You should listen to your pretty little boyfriend more often, Pete.”

            Pete looked up at Patrick then, clearly trying to focus.

            “What is it?” he asked.

            “Three of you want so badly to be human,” not-Joe rasped. “And one of you wants to be a god.”

            Patrick could see the change in their faces when they understood. He would feel embarrassed later. He started to tug them back towards the venue so they could get inside, find their own ground to fight on, but he stopped as soon as he was facing the assembly hall.

            On the roof of the venue, the giant orange juicer of a roof with its enormous white pleats, there was a dark figure watching them.

            Patrick wasn’t sure how tall the venue was. It wasn’t a skyscraper, not even close, but it wasn’t a small building either. It wasn’t the sort of drop a human could take, but then, Patrick hadn’t wanted to be human for a long time. Not for as long as he knew there was another option.

            The figure stepped to the edge of the roof and jumped off, arms extended like he was jumping from a diving board. He flipped over in the air, probably just to show off, and he landed on the ground in front of them with a crash that shook the ground and resonated through Patrick’s bones. The asphalt had split, cracks crawling out in every direction and a cloud of dust in their center, directly in front of them.

            _Let it have killed him_ , Patrick thought. _Please just let it be over_.

            The dust began to settle, and another Patrick looked up at him and smiled.

***

            Andy didn’t really hold with standards of masculinity most of the time, but he was still uncomfortable with discussions of self-esteem. What was there to be said that wouldn’t be uncomfortable and embarrassing? He had issues with himself, sure, and he was positive everyone in his band did too. That didn’t mean he liked thinking about it.

            He didn’t like thinking about a Pete who was already THE emo poster boy but wanted to look more like it. He didn’t like thinking about Joe making faces at videos of interviews and leaving the room, didn’t like thinking of Patrick going out to get clothes and coming back mortified by numbers on the tags. He sure as shit didn’t like focusing on the way he was dwarfed by just about everyone around, never mind how strong he was. And that was all just superficial stuff, the kinds of things that didn’t really matter. If he didn’t like thinking about any of that, then he actively hated thinking about how he cried himself to sleep after a friend showed him Dracula the first time.

            But just because he didn’t like it didn’t mean he could stop seeing it. He did see the guys eating salads after nights of binge drinking. He saw them shrink away from the extra who gasped “oh my god, they’re all midgets.” He saw the light tracings of old battle scars. Seeing that was all bad enough, and now he had this, these physical representations of everything he didn’t want to think about.

            From the moment Andy first considered what their appearances might have meant, he suspected that Patrick’s would look the most different. He hadn’t wanted to think of it then either. But now, with the thing in front of them, slowly standing up in the huge crater it had made in the ground, smiling up at them terribly, it was no longer something he could avoid.

            The monster was thin, not in a healthy way, but skeletally so, a late-night PSA for anorexia. It was tall too, or at least tall for Patrick. All of the creatures were taller than the band, though none of them were really remarkably tall, not even brushing six feet. This thing was about the height of the real Joe, but its hair—platinum blonde and free of a hat for once—gave the monster another inch or two from the way it stuck up. The demon wore a well fitted pinstripe suit, which unfortunately made Andy think of Jack Skellington. Once he had the thought, irrational laughter rose up in his chest. Like all of them, the most unsettling feature were the gleaming black eyes.

            “Hello there,” the Patrick demon said pleasantly. “Fall Out Boy. An honor to meet you at last.”

            “Patrick,” Pete breathed.

            “Hey there, sweetheart,” the Patrick demon leered. “You I’ve especially been looking forward to seeing.”

            Andy didn’t blame Patrick for snarling. There was something in its voice, longing with an eerie dark undercurrent. When the Patrick demon looked at Pete, it licked its lips. Seeing that, Andy wanted to step in front of Pete himself.

            “What do you want?” Patrick asked.

            “Me?” the Patrick demon asked. The expression on its face turned quickly to disgust and loathing when it looked at Patrick. “I want you to die and rid the world of your worthless existence. I want to get your boyfriend somewhere dark and alone for a while and then for him to off himself as well. I want all four of you to suffer and die. What do you want?”

            Andy stepped forward. He knew he shouldn’t rile this thing up more than necessary, but he couldn’t leave it open to attack his band.  Patrick had moved in front of Pete, so Andy wanted to stand between him and his demon. Once Andy moved, the Patrick demon started laughing.

            “Aw, is Andy gonna save his friends? Big bad dhampir here to fight for his friends’ honor? That’s cute,” he said.

            “Cute?” Andy asked. “You don’t scare me.”

            The Patrick demon grinned, his teeth gleaming in the parking lot lights.

            “I don’t?” he asked. Lightning fast, he slammed his fist down onto the ground. The parking lot cracked and split from the force. A rift spread from the impact site, knocking Andy off of his feet. The Patrick demon laughed as the earth quaked, and before Andy could get to his feet again the demon was there, looming over him, less human than any of them.

            “Did you ever wonder what it was like to _really_ be human? To run out of breath after sprinting for less than a minute? To be lapped by magic wherever you go?”

            The demon’s hands closed down on Andy’s shoulders, and he leaned forward, just slightly. Andy could see that the Patrick demon wasn’t exerting himself, but Andy still felt the force, heavy and crushing against his body. He gasped for breath, and the Patrick demon smirked. He stood, catching Andy by the throat, and hauling him up into the air.

            “Did you ever even _imagine_ what it feels like to be on the brink of death while everyone around you is just getting started?”

            Andy was gasping, clawing at the demon’s hands, but it was like fighting something made out of stone. Helpless. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Joe run at the creature, but the Patrick demon knocked him back with his free hand, sending Joe flying with the apparent force of swatting a fly.

            “Do you know what it’s like to get a taste of power and have it ripped away from you, then told you should be _grateful_?!” The demon snarled the last word and slammed Andy into the ground. He heard a crash-crack as he hit the asphalt, felt something break, either the ground or his back. It must have been the ground, since he could still manage the amount of pain he was in, but that didn’t make him feel much better.

            “I’m not weak,” the Patrick demon said. His voice was so close to the real Patrick’s that, through his blurry eyed vision, Andy could barely tell the monster wasn’t his Patrick. “I’m not vulnerable. No one wants the blood in my neck. Even if they did it wouldn’t matter, because I am stronger than any vampire.”

            He placed his foot on Andy’s thigh. He pressed down just the tiniest bit, and it already hurt. Andy knew, with sudden horror, that it would only take a little more pressure for the demon to snap his femur in half then and there. Still he couldn’t move. His head throbbed, his whole body seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat, and it was all he could do to keep shallowly breathing.

            “You were his first fear,” the Patrick demon said quietly. “My first fear. And all we want is to be strong enough to not be afraid.”

            He lifted Andy up again. Andy knew that this time when he would be thrown down, he probably wasn’t going to get back up. Andy closed his eyes, braced himself, and then the Patrick demon stumbled and dropped him.

            The fall still hurt, sending waves of pain up and down his spinal cord and through all his nerves. But he was still conscious, if very fuzzy and not quite able to move. Andy’s eyes opened slowly, reluctantly, and saw that the Patrick demon was in a new fight. He was circling a wolf very slowly, and the wolf’s hackles were raised. Andy wanted to shout, to tell Joe to just run, but he couldn’t find his voice.

            The demon was right. He was stronger than any vampire. Stronger than anything Andy had fought before. Andy had seen the twitch of his muscles and the look on his face. All that strength, all that speed, and he was barely exerting himself at all. Even if Andy could stand up again, even if he and Joe were fighting it together, he wasn’t certain they would stand a chance.

            Andy tried to keep himself focused on the battle. He kept losing focus; one second he was able to see the vague shapes of a wolf and a tall, thin man, and the next just a colorless blur. He thought he saw others, less involved in the fight because they couldn’t keep up with it. Vaguely human shapes were on the fringes of the battle.

            Andy could still hear fine, though. He could hear shouting as he lay there, willing himself to get up despite being unable to put any strength behind that desire.

            “Do you think you’re faster than me?” Patrick’s voice was mocking. “You think you’re faster than his dreams, than his nightmares?”

            There was a horrible sound of flesh hitting flesh, and then a distinctly canine whimper. Then the horrible tearing sound of skin pierced by a knife, and Patrick’s voice again.

            “Why don’t you fight me?”

            It was hard to distinguish between the two without being able to see properly, but Andy was sure that was his Patrick, and also sure that this was going to end badly.

            “I’ll deal with you two in a minute,” Patrick’s voice said, and then there were twin whooshes of air, twin thuds on the ground and soft noises of pain.

            All the while, the fight raged on. Joe’s strategy seemed sounder than Andy’s, which had ended up as just goading the creature and hoping to match its strength. What a failure that had been. The wolf leapt at the demon, sank its teeth in, and darted away before the Patrick demon could take hold of him. They were small attacks that didn’t do much damage from what Andy could see, but at least Joe hadn’t been caught yet.

            “You’re trying my patience, Joe,” the Patrick demon said, not even the slightest bit out of breath. Andy’s eyesight was slowly beginning to clear, and as it did he could concentrate more on what he could see. Rather than chasing after Joe, the Patrick demon held very, very still. When Joe jumped at him next he caught him by the scruff of his neck in midair.

            Joe made an anxious whining noise, and the demon brought the wolf closer to him.

            “Misbehaving dogs typically get put down,” he said. His voice was flat and cold, and he swung Joe back and forth twice before throwing him across the lot.

            Andy could turn his head just enough to see Joe hit the high glass walls of the venue and tumble down, motionless. Pete, Patrick, and Dirty screamed, but all Andy could do was inhale sharply. He wasn’t dead, the pack bond made Andy sure that Joe was alive, but he had to be in much worse shape than Andy.

            Andy pleaded with himself to get up, to help them because the three people left might as well be insects for this thing to squish, but even getting his hand to move was an impossible task.

            “Hey! What about me, fuckface?” Dirty was shouting then, and Andy wanted more than ever to scream. He didn’t need someone else dying for them. “You’re not in my head, you can’t scare me!”

            “I have nothing against you,” Patrick’s voice came coolly. “So, let’s not make this unpleasant, shall we? Stay out of matters that don’t concern you.”

            Swearing violently, a figure Andy strongly suspected was Dirty marched forward and swung with the slowest, clumsiest right hook he had ever seen in his life. Nevertheless, it looked like he was going to hit the thing but then Dirty’s fist passed right through the demon.

            The Patrick demon touched his chest and made a little “hmph,” noise in his that sounded largely amused.

            “I can’t touch you?” Dirty said, distressed. The demon lurched forward towards him, and though Dirty flinched, no contact was made. The hands fell right through him, insubstantial as air.

            “Interesting,” the demon said, sounding bored. “Anyway—” The horrible huge smile came over his face again as he walked through Dirty towards the other two. “Pete.”

            Pete and Patrick stood up on their own, but the demon shoved Patrick back onto the ground. He wrapped one arm around Pete’s waist and placed his hand on the small of his back, drawing him in closer.

            “Let’s get to know each other, shall we?” he asked. He lifted his free hand up to Pete’s face. Although Pete tried to squirm away, he was held tight. The demon traced Pete’s lower lip with his thumb, their faces too close, and just as it looked like he was going to lean in close enough to touch, Patrick’s fist slammed into the side of the Patrick demon’s face.

            To Andy’s relief, the demon dropped Pete. Pete staggered back on shaking legs, and the demon faced Patrick.

            “Oh, Patrick,” he said. “What are we going to do about you?”

            “Don’t touch him,” Patrick said. “Don’t get anywhere near him, don’t you even think about it.”

            “And I suppose you’re going to stop me?” The amusement in his voice was clear, but Patrick stayed where he was, standing between the demon and Pete.

            “I guess so,” Patrick said.

            Andy didn’t want to watch this fight, but he remained focused on it because he couldn’t bear to look away. The demon barely hit Patrick, but when it wasn’t knocking him to the ground, it was shoving him back and making him double over. It sounded like the Patrick demon was saying something under his breath too, but Andy couldn’t make it out.

            He hit Patrick over and over again, and if Patrick got any punches in, they did all the damage of raindrops hitting the demon on the head. He could see Patrick getting winded and slowing down until he was no longer moving fast enough to fight.

            The demon pushed Patrick onto the ground and leaned over him, then pulled something off of him— a gun, Andy realized with a cold wave of trepidation.

            “Dirty?” the Patrick demon called. He aimed the gun directly at Patrick’s head. “You’re going to walk away now. And don’t look back if you want everyone to survive tonight.”

            Dirty, standing to the side, looked at each of them in turn, aghast. But he nodded, and he started running. The Patrick demon dropped the gun on the ground, ignoring it as it went off with a burst of sparks, firing off into the empty parking lot.

            “If you’re too pathetic to save yourself, how do you expect to save anyone else?” the demon asked in a low voice. He grabbed Patrick by his shirt collar and flung him off into the distance, just as he had Joe. Like he was shot-putting people, except Patrick was so much more fragile than Joe. How could he possibly live through all of that?

            Patrick hit the ground with a sickening crunch. Pete, the last one of them still fully conscious, screamed.

            “He’ll be fine,” the Patrick demon said. He had to shout it over Pete’s screaming, but he just looked amused. “We aren’t going to do any permanent damage, just wanted to introduce ourselves.”

            He strode back over to Pete, then paused and held out one finger for Pete to stay still. By some miracle, Pete did, instead of running or getting himself killed while Andy couldn’t to tell him not to be stupid. Andy had finally gotten to his hands and knees while he watched, waiting for the world to stop spinning long enough for him to stand. He was so focused on keeping an eye on Pete that he forgot to watch the monster. Andy heard the creaks and protests of metal before he turned and saw the Patrick demon uprooting an entire bike rack, then speeding back to Pete with the metal bars in his arms.

            “On your knees,” the demon said. His voice was quiet, but there was no questioning the authority in it, and Pete dropped down. One bar at a time, the demon took the pieces of metal and jammed them into the ground, then bent them around Pete, lacing together a thick metal cage that held Pete tight in position.

            “Feel free to scream as loud as you like,” the demon said. “No one will hear you, I promise.”

            He leaned over and pressed his lips against Pete’s forehead. Pete tried to move away, but he was stuck. The demon laughed once, quietly, and winked at him.

            “Mine’s still conscious,” Andy heard someone say in his own voice. His breath caught, and he tried to get up as fast as he could, but fell over. The thing that looked like Patrick came to loom over him again. He had moved so fast that Andy hadn’t seen him move at all. He smiled down at Andy, black eyes glittering against his high, white cheekbones.

            “We’ll see you soon,” he said. He lifted up his foot, and the last thing Andy heard before blinding pain shot through his skull was Pete screaming.

            Andy knew he couldn’t have been out for long, but he could have sworn the sky was growing lighter when he looked up again. His eyelids felt sticky as he pried them open, and though it was still night, the faint light above him seemed too bright for his eyes.

            “Hey, easy,” a familiar voice said. Andy realized dully that his head wasn’t on the concrete anymore but resting on someone’s knees. His hand fluttered to his forehead, but someone caught it before he reached it.

            “Hey, hey, let’s not have you knocking yourself out again, yeah?”

            Travie was leaning over Andy. He was smiling a little concerned smile, but his face was reassuring.

            “You with us this time, man?” he asked.

            “Mmm,” Andy could make noises, so there was that, but he wasn’t sure he was up for full sentences yet. “Mmhmm. How’d you—?”

            “Dirty called me,” Travie said. “Brought back a whole bus for you guys, ‘cause it didn’t sound like you were gonna be up for driving yourselves.”

            “The guys!” Andy tried to sit up and Travie placed a hand on his chest, forcing him back down.

            “Fine, fine, it’s gonna be okay,” he said. “You were the one we were worried about, dude. You’ve been unconscious. Everybody else is awake and breathing okay. We got Patrick and Joe on the bus, and the guys are working on something to get those fucking bars off Pete.”

            “Bars?” Andy repeated. His head felt fuzzy.

            “It looks like someone twisted up industrial steel pipes right around him,” Travie said. There was anger and worry buried just beneath the soothing surface of his face. “But he isn’t hurt.”

            “Good,” Andy said. He hadn’t dared to feel relieved until then. “I wasn’t sure… I couldn’t keep up...”

            “You’ve been through the fucking wringer,” Travie said. “Alright. Can you walk?”

            Andy could limp, with help, and he managed to ease his way onto the bus. Joe had been laid out on the sofa, and Patrick was sitting at the dining table, holding a lumpy dish towel full of ice up to his forehead. Both of them lit up when he walked in, which only made Andy feel guiltier for not protecting them from those monsters. They looked like hell, but they both seemed relieved to see him.

            “Good, you’re up,” Joe said. “Just in time for breakfast.” The joke fell a little flat, but Andy smiled at him anyway.

            “You guys are okay?” Andy asked. He sat down next to Patrick.

            “I’m fine,” Patrick said pointedly. “Fine enough to stand, which means I should be out there _helping_ , and—”

            “We’re going to be okay, but pretty injured,” Joe interrupted. “I, for one, feel like my spine is made of shattered porcelain. And I am concussed, but to be fair, I think we’re all concussed. That’s one of like seven reasons we’re not letting Patrick out to try and do any heavy lifting.”

            “Pete—” Patrick began, but Joe cut him off again.

            “He’s going to be fine. He’d be much more upset if you were limping around out there and you know it.”  
            “He’s okay,” Andy agreed. “Travie was just trying to get the bike rack off him.”

            “Bike rack?” Joe said, and Andy realized that neither of them had seen where all the metal bars came from. His mouth felt suddenly dry and hot.

            “He tore up a bike rack and made that out of it,” he said. “He’s—it’s?—strong.”

            Patrick drew in on himself at that, and Andy looked closer at him. Patrick’s lips looked like ground beef, and the pinkish damage continued all the way up to his hairline, although his nose somehow escaped undamaged. His breathing was labored, and his torn and bloody clothes looked more like rags than Clandestine Industries merch.

            “How’s the rib?” Andy asked. Patrick glared at him.

            “Kinda feels like I’m getting stabbed in the chest, but other than that,” he shook his head. “We might need to stop at a hospital before the next show, but it’s not an emergency.”

            “Well, if you’re admitting that you need a hospital, then it might be,” Joe said. Andy leaned back to stretch his sore muscles and his body screamed in protest. He should probably get checked out as well, but they were far, far away from Doctor Ferrum. They weren’t close enough to Milwaukee for his mom to see how he was either. So, for the moment, he hoped his healing powers could take care of him for a day or two.

            Before it could get too heavy, Pete burst onto the bus. He ran straight to Patrick, sitting down on his other side and breathing in deeply as though he hadn’t been breathing in hours. Andy was sure it could only have been twenty minutes he was out, at the very longest, but he couldn’t imagine the stress of being awake for all of it. Patrick and Pete stared at each other, having a small, private moment as they looked into each other’s eyes. Andy was about to intercede when Travie cleared his throat.

            “You guys want to stop and get breakfast on the way to the next stop?” he asked.

            “I could go for breakfast,” Joe said. “And like, a horse tranquilizer.”

            “Yeah, I got like, Advil,” Travie said.

            “That’ll work,” Joe said.

            The ride was quiet as the sun rose outside the window. Andy wasn’t sure what to say— what he could say in front of other people or what they even wanted to say to each other. So he watched the sunrise and felt the pain gradually start fading from his limbs.

            The bus stopped at a Denny’s, to Andy’s chagrin, but the good news was it was so early in the morning that they weren’t likely to run into a hoard of Pete Wentz fans. Travie, tactful as always, asked for separate tables so that Fall Out Boy could “have a minute.”

            For a minute, the four of them were quiet at the table. They had washed the dirt and blood off their faces and changed into clean clothes, but they still looked pretty banged up. The waitress eyed them oddly before taking their orders. Once she was gone, Joe took a deep breath.

            “I’ll open with saying that that fucking sucked,” he said.

            “Putting it mildly,” Pete muttered. He twirled his straw around in his water glass, looking like he had no plans of drinking any of it. The hush fell over them again.

            “I’m sorry,” Patrick said. Andy turned to him to see him staring down at the table.

            “Sorry?” Andy asked.

            “We could’ve taken them if it weren’t for,” he swallowed. “If it weren’t for mine.”

            “Yeah, and that’s totally your fault,” Joe said, shaking his head. He looked so annoyed that he almost seemed disgusted. “You didn’t make that thing.”

            “Didn’t I?” Patrick asked.

            “Did we make ours?” Joe asked. Patrick rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair, muttering something that sounded like “not the same thing.”

            “So we got our asses handed to us,” Joe continued. “For the first time in a long time. And it was terrible. But we’ll figure it out, yeah?”

            “Ryan had some theories,” Pete said. His throat was raw from screaming for so long, but Andy didn’t want to think about that. As it turned out, there were lots of things that he didn’t want to think about. “I don’t remember all of them but yeah, we can talk to him.”

            “And this isn’t all bad news,” Joe added. “We’ve learned a hell of a lot more about these things. We can tell them apart from the real us by their eyes, and they can’t touch other people. That’s good news.”

            “But how the hell do we fight something like that?” Patrick asked. He looked horrified and panicked and above all else, guilty. Kind of how Andy felt.

            “Everything has a weak spot,” Andy said. “We just… have to figure out what this one’s is.”

            “These ones,” Joe corrected. Andy glared at him, and Joe shrugged. “I’m optimistic, but I’m not gonna sugar coat it. There’s four of them. And you two didn’t get to see it as much, but the other three are really bad too.”

            “I believe it,” Pete said. “There’s a lot that’s wrong with them. For example, if they’re physical, then why didn’t Joe smell anything from them?”

            “I smelled the blood when they were bleeding,” Andy said. “Human. But I couldn’t smell anything before then, you’re right.”

            “Yeah, and also, they don’t have auras,” Pete said. Andy turned sharply to him. Pete’s face was hard, full of the weight of what he was saying. “They don’t— I don’t understand. It’s not possible to be alive without an aura, but there’s nothing on them. They don’t exist, but they do.”

            “But only for us,” Patrick added. “I mean, that’s connected, isn’t it?”

            “It must be,” Joe said. “But how the fuck should we know how?”

            The waitress came back with three heaping plates of pancakes and one small plate of fruit for Andy.

            “Some things never change, do they?” Pete asked, and Andy followed his line of sight to the fruit plate in front of him. “The four of us are outmatched by a monster, holed up in a diner. There’s nothing but overripe fruit for you to eat. Kinda back to square one, aren’t we?”

            “This feels nothing like square one,” Patrick said, with a very small laugh. He leaned into Pete, resting his head on Pete’s shoulder.

            “I know what you mean,” Andy said.

            “Us four against the world. And apparently ourselves,” Joe said.

            “God, that’s depressing,” Patrick said, but he snorted too. “Are you guys okay? Really?”

            “Stiff, but managing,” Joe said. “You?”

            “Well, I’d really like to get my ribs taped before I sing, but,” Patrick shrugged. “It could’ve been worse. Maybe that’s the scary part.”

            He was right, Andy thought. The scariest part was not that they had been beaten, but that they were allowed to walk away. He didn’t like it, but they were alive, he supposed. They didn’t know what they were fighting or how to fight it, but they were alive. For that moment it would have to count for something.


	2. The Greatest Show Unearthed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All across the country, children have started going missing. Pete suspects this might be the type of danger they can fight off, after their recent disastrous encounter with doubles of themselves. But there may be more than one dangerous enemy with Fall Out Boy in mind, and some creatures are inherently Wicked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One day I will write a chapter that does not include copious descriptions of blood and violence, but since today is not that day, I would like to forewarn you that this chapter will include: blood, violence, heights, language, and hypnotism.

            “I think there’s a demonic rock band,” Pete said.

            “Somebody stop him if you already saw this b-horror movie,” Joe muttered.

            Patrick sighed.

            Things had been quiet. Almost boring, although Patrick wasn’t really opposed to the whatever-they-were doubles staying far away. But it was clear that Pete was going a little stir crazy without something to pursue. Or, without something to pursue that they could make tangible progress on.

            Because they were still trying to figure out the demon double thing, really they were. They just hadn’t come up with much yet.

            “Okay, I’ll bite,” Patrick said. “Why do you think there’s a demonic rock band?”

            “Children have been disappearing at an inordinately high rate in cities all over the country,” Pete said. “But it happens one city at a time, and it moves _almost like tours_. That’s not a coincidence.”

            “Honey,” Patrick said. “I’m not quite following your logic.”

            Pete still beamed when Patrick said ‘honey,’ and that made Patrick smile too. God, but he was a little bit in love. Pete was just so much, all the time, and he was all Patrick’s. Patrick still felt possessive and triumphant whenever he looked at him. And while they hadn’t worked out every kink in their relationship, most of the tour knew, and the worst response they got was Joe making gagging noises whenever they kissed in front of him.

            (“I’m not homophobic or anything, but-” Joe had begun, and without looking up, Andy had said “Careful with what you say next.” Joe glared and said, “But I thought we had a pretty firm no PDA in front of each other rule.”

            “You’re right,” Patrick had said. “I’m sorry, we’ll stop kissing out here, and instead go in the back and have _really loud sex_. And I’ll tell you all about it later, just like how the rules worked with girls.”

            “You guys are the worst kind of embarrassing parents,” Andy said.)

            So, things were mostly good. The tour was good. Their new security guy, Marcus, had been eased into the “sometimes this band fights monsters and you’re not here to protect them from that” conversation pretty well. Pete and Patrick were great, Carmilla was starting to read picture books on her own. The only thing left to worry about was the issue of the doubles.

            And Patrick knew Pete. He could say with some amount of certainty that he knew Pete better than anyone on the planet. If he wasn’t making progress with that problem, then he needed a problem he could solve.

            In this case, a demon rock band, apparently.

            “It’s not following the trajectory of our tour,” Pete said. He pulled open his laptop, and Joe sighed and murmured, “Oh, God, he made a chart.”

            Pete had not made a chart, but he had made a digital map with little red pixelated push pins stuck into it. He hit the spacebar, and a red line began tracing its way through the push pins. It did move like a tour, sort of. The red line started at a pushpin up in Portland, Maine, then went directly down into Boston, New York, Philadelphia, then across the Northern Midwest. But unlike a tour, it seemed to snake down in a wavy line, as it crossed the Bible belt, then took another southern dip down the East Coast by Georgia, then went West again, and then deep South on the continental United States. The last pushpin was set somewhere in Texas, but it wasn’t near any major city Patrick knew of.

            “Weird tour if it is one,” he said, bent over the laptop. Something felt a little off about it.

            “Well, yeah, but they could be trying to save gas or something,” Pete said. “What? Who’s to say demons are faring any better in the recession than the rest of us?”

            “Right, so we’re looking out for broke demons, in a rock band, in the middle of nowhere in Texas,” Joe said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “That’s obviously the most logical explanation.”

            “This isn’t a tour,” Patrick said, leaning in a little closer to the map. He traced the line with his finger where it had started. “Look, where is that in Pennsylvania? I thought it was Philadelphia, but it’s not, is it? It isn’t close to any major city.”

            “We’re not in a major city right now,” Andy said. “Lots of venues aren’t in major cities, but right outside them.”

            “But that’s not right outside Philly, that’s the middle of nowhere,” Patrick protested. “Pete, what city is that?”

            Pete looked sort of sheepish then, like Patrick had found the one hole in his theory.

            “Some of the dates are a little weird,” he admitted. “Like, there’s a Boston date, and you can’t see it, but there’s also a Salem date. But that one,” he jabbed his finger at the pin Patrick had pointed to. “Is in a little town called Centralia.”

            “Centralia?” Joe said. “Centralia, Pennsylvania?”

            “Yeah, I just put the pin there, I’ve never heard of it,” Pete said. “Probably just some small town where-”

            “The Silent Hill town?” Joe said. Pete stiffened.

            “The what?”

            “Move,” Joe shoved Pete out of the way even as he said it. He Googled ‘Centralia’ and clicked on a picture. It was a bit of a hellscape, Patrick realized. It showed an enormous fissure going through the middle of a street in a small downtown area, smoke rising up from the crack in the ground. He’d only seen the streets cracked like that when his double was tearing up the parking lot, but no, this had nothing to do with them.

            (He was sure it didn’t have anything to do with them, but he couldn’t get the not-Band out of his head. They were always there in the background, better, loud and dangerous.)

            “I saw a Discovery Channel thing about this place,” Joe said. “It’s famous for being, you know, what Silent Hill was based off of.”

            “The horror game?” Pete asked.

            “Yeah, look,” Joe pulled up another photo. A modern one, in full color, of a foggy forest with smoke still rising out of the ground. “It was a coal mining town, but somehow one of the coal mines caught fire. The whole town got burnt up and destroyed, ash everywhere, and it’s still burning fifty years later.”

            “Oh,” Pete said in a small voice.

            “It has a population of, like, ten,” Joe said. “Why would a tour stop there?”

            “Maybe they’re just very punk rock,” Andy suggested. Patrick snorted.

            “Well then, what do you think it is?” Pete asked. “Something is happening. Kids are disappearing at scary rates from these towns. Dozens a night, sometimes more in the big cities. _Something’s_ going on.”

            “That I believe,” Joe said. “Got any more details on the kids disappearing?”

            “Yeah,” Pete shut the laptop and turned to the band. “More kids are disappearing from the big cities and less from the small towns, so the percentages of kids going missing might be the same. Also, in this pattern I showed you, all the calls about kids disappearing came in the night.”

            “Don’t kids go missing all the time?” Patrick asked.

            “Not at this rate,” Pete said. “It’ll be a ton of them all at once, and then the next day back to normal rates. It’s weird.”

            “Okay, it sounds weird,” Joe agreed. “None of the reported missing kids have turned back up?”

            “Obviously some of the kids have,” Pete said. “Like you said, kids go missing everyday. That’s what makes this so hard to track. Some kids reported missing on the day of the report spike have come back, just not most of them. And sometimes none in the smaller towns.”

            “Do you think something’s killing them?” Andy asked. Pete winced.

            “It’s a possibility,” he admitted. “But I’d like to hope it’s something else. I mean, most real monsters don’t just go for kids.”

            “Do some?” Patrick asked. Pete glanced at him.

            “Obviously,” he said. “Well, okay, I guess it’s not obvious. But…” he looked at Andy again, briefly, almost apologetically. “Some myth-monsters are also monsters in the human way. I’m sure the percentage of, you know, pedophiles and shit like that is the same in the werewolf community as it is in the human community. And then there are monsters who go after children. Pretty sure the boogeyman only attacks kids.”

            There was a beat of silence.

            “Did you just say, ‘the boogeyman’?” Patrick asked.

            “Well that’s not a migrant monster, so I don’t think it can be that,” Joe said.

            “No no no no no,” Patrick said. “No, we’re not moving past this. There’s an honest to fuck boogeyman out there?”

            “It’s not a big deal, babe,” Pete said.

            “Um? It’s absolutely a big deal? There is a boogeyman?”

            “Technically there are boogey-people. It’s a race, not an entity.”

            “BOOGEY-PEOPLE?”

            “This isn’t the point!” Pete said. “It’s not a boogeyman. Or woman. It’s something that travels.”

            “So, we’re on research duty for something that travels and goes after children?” Joe said.

            “I’ll call the rest of the Scooby gang and see what they can find,” Pete said.

            Having something new to work on had an immediate positive effect on Pete. He had something to focus on, even if it was a grim something, and he seemed more alive than he had since the doubles. The not-band. Patrick didn’t want to think about them, but they kept coming up in his head and in discussion. It was all the more frustrating because they couldn’t figure out anything about them. Ryan claimed to have theories but wanted to work out the kinks first before presenting them. Patrick thought that was stupid, but he didn’t say so.

            Patrick knew what Pete was feeling. He needed something to work on too, something he could control, so he had been throwing himself into producing. He poured over The Hush Sound’s new album and shot emails back and forth with Greta all day long. He worked with Travie, in the rare moments that they both had free time at the same time. And he wrote new music, some that he hoped would be Fall Out Boy music and some that… didn’t seem to be for the band. Those songs he stored away carefully, with the promise that he would look at them again someday.

            The only downside to Pete actually having something to work on now was that he was growing more obsessed with his case than with Patrick. Patrick had kind of enjoyed being the center of Pete’s world. He knew how Pete was when he dated, he had seen it and scorned it enough, but it was nice being on the receiving end of Pete’s affection. (His adoration which bordered on worship.) But that night, Pete’s eyes were glued to his laptop and Patrick was trying with some difficulty not to drape himself all the way around him. He leaned his head on Pete’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around his waist. Though Pete turned his head slightly and kissed him, it felt more perfunctory than passionate.

            “Ah, the familiar sting of rejection,” Patrick said. Pete turned to face him, looking amused.

            “I’m sorry, was I not paying enough attention to you?” Pete asked. He leaned in and kissed Patrick on the lips, a little bit more enthusiastically, then turned back to his computer. With a sigh, Patrick began massaging Pete’s shoulders, feeling a wave of satisfaction when Pete moaned a little.

            “You have theories?” Patrick asked. No use trying to talk around the problem if Pete was already fixated.

            “A few,” Pete admitted. “None of them likely.”

            “And I guess we can’t bother Ryan with this too, huh?” Patrick said.

            “Nah, we're on our own. Old school,” Pete said. “Ever wonder how we used to get anything done? No laptops on the road, no wifi anywhere, none of us knew how to fight…”

            “Yeah, that was how we ended up fighting vampire alligators in minidresses,” Patrick said. “I don't feel especially nostalgic about that.”

            “Shame,” Pete said. “You looked kinda hot in that dress.”

            Patrick flipped him off, then kissed him again.

            “Don't stay up too late,” he said. “And can I turn off the light back here? The laptop is fine, but if you need more, can you go up front?”

            “You're going to bed early? Is the world ending?”

            “It's three AM,” Patrick said, as gently as he could.

            “Oh,” Pete said. He looked a little freaked out, a little guilty. “I just-”

            “Lost track of time,” Patrick said. “I know. It's almost like I know you or something.”

            “I'm always going to do this, you know,” Pete said. “I mean, I'm better sometimes, but I'm always gonna have days where I'm up all night researching migrant demons.”

            “And yet again I say that _it's almost like I know you or something_.” Patrick said firmly. “Try to go to bed before the sun rises, but no pressure if you don’t.”

            He kissed Pete again and flipped the lights off, trying to settle into bed. He was right in the cusp of sleep when he heard Pete hissing in his ear.

            “Patrick, hey, babe, you up?”

            “I am now,” he slurred. “What?”

            “I’ve been thinking about Centralia.”

            Patrick sat up. More time might have passed than he initially thought. Pete had moved onto the bed, and he had brought the laptop with him, the blue glow washing over his face in the semidarkness. Although the clock on the computer said it was after five, the world outside was still dark.

            “This’d better be pretty fuckin’ important,” Patrick said, pulling himself up onto his elbows. “What?”

            “Okay, so I put Centralia on the map because it’s dead center of where all the kids went missing on October 16th,” Pete said. “They disappeared from all the towns in the area and Centralia is right in the center.”

            Patrick stared at the dot on the computer, the brightness of the screen burning his eyes.

            “And then over here, in Galveston,” Pete pointed at Texas, “This had a huge rate of disappearance, but it’s so far from the biggest city. And up here, in Salem…” he trailed off, biting his lip. “I don’t think this is moving to traditional cities for tour dates.”

            “Please get to the point.”

            “Natural disasters,” Pete said. “I think that this… whatever it is, it’s following the path of natural disasters.”

            “Go on,” Patrick said.

            “The coal mine fire in Pennsylvania,” Pete said, “A hurricane in Galveston, another hurricane in Maine, tornado disaster sites all across the midwest, forest fires--”

            “Is there anything you can’t trace back to a natural disaster?” Patrick asked. He was still tired, but was feeling much more alert now as he studied the map. The last stop before Galveston was New Orleans. Another hurricane, he thought.

            “Nothing,” Pete said. “It all fits, even the tiny towns. Some of them are technically manmade, Centralia being one of them, but it’s all natural disasters.”

            “So, what does that mean?” Patrick asked.

            “Fae, probably.”

            “You know,” Patrick said dryly, “We’ve thought a lot of things were fae that turned out to be entirely unrelated. Remember the whole evil twin thing?”

            “Yeah, okay, but nature is kind of the whole schtick when it comes to fae. I mean, it could be something else, but this has fae written all over it, you know?”

            Patrick mused over it for a minute. It sounded likely, but he was used to fae-based fake outs. The hunters, the doubles… somehow he doubted this that whatever this was was fae.

            “Look, dude, I’m exhausted. Talk about it tomorrow?” he said.

            “Yeah,” Pete smiled fondly, and pressed a kiss on Patrick’s forehead. “Go to sleep, baby.”

            Later still, Patrick woke again to Pete gently shaking his shoulder.

            “Hey, babe?” Pete said. Patrick rolled over to look at Pete’s wide, half-asleep eyes. “Do you think flamingos have feelings?”

            Patrick stared at him.

            “I want a divorce,” he said. Pete beamed.

            “You want to marry me?” he asked. Patrick ripped the pillow out from under his head and smacked Pete with it.

            He woke up one more time that night, so briefly he wasn’t even sure it really happened. His eyes cracked open just enough to see Pete lit in the dim glow of dawn sunlight streaming through the window, murmuring quietly to himself. It was too low for Patrick to hear properly, but he caught a phrase or two within all the mumbling. “ _... human child…. Wild….full of weeping…_ ”

            When Patrick woke up for good sometime just before noon, he was still tired and in an irritable mood. Pete appeared to be giving the band the same speech Patrick got during the night, so Patrick sat down with a cup of coffee while they went over the same things he did.

            “Okay, so it’s almost definitely following natural disasters,” Joe said. “But that kind of happens every day. If we want to head this thing off, we need to figure out where it’s going next.”

            “Got us covered there too,” Pete said. He opened up another fucking map - when did he sleep? - and zeroed in on the Southwestern United States.

            “Conveniently, it’s going the same direction as our tour,” Pete said.

            “Very conveniently,” Joe noted. “Like, too conveniently.”

            “Don’t be a downer; look! Our last shows are in Southern California. This thing last struck in Texas. I just need to see where a ton of kids disappeared from last night to be sure-”

            “Alright, so that’s terrible,” Andy said. Pete gave him a look.

            “I’m figuring it out as fast as I can,” he said. “Besides, they might not be, you know, dead. There haven’t been any bodies. Anyway, all we have to do is find the site of a major natural disaster west of Texas, and, you know, stake it out there.”

            “Well, there’s not enough time now,” Patrick said. “We’ve got a show tonight and tomorrow, and we can’t explore the entire Western half of the US in that time.”

            “No, but we can be pretty sure it’s gonna be around here,” he said, drawing a circle around the area in question. It only covered the southern tip of California, the bottom corner of Nevada, and a bit of Western Arizona, but outside of a map, that was still a pretty huge swath of land. “It’ll be where a disaster was, and,” he added with a glint in his eye, “These have all been spaced three days apart.”

            “So all we need now is a natural disaster,” Joe nodded. “The San Francisco earthquake?”

            “Too far north,” Pete said. “But it is… weird that they didn’t stop in San Francisco. I mean, wasn’t that one of the biggest disasters, like, ever?”

            “In the continental US, yes,” Andy said. “Not exactly Pompeii, but still.”

            “Well, we should probably keep that on the list just in case,” Pete said. “But I think they’ll be further south.”

            “If you’re right, we should be able to tell where it is based on where kids disappeared from,” Patrick said.

            “Yeah, but we have to check each city and town for that information,” Pete said. “Unfortunately, not too many places will report a sudden boom in disappearances, especially in big cities. And in this area, we’ve got three enormous cities that we need to check.”

            There was a pause.

            “What I’m saying is this could take a little investigating,” Pete said. Patrick would have found this revelation easier to forgive if Pete hadn’t looked so damn excited.

            “So, I’m cancelling my plane ticket home after the tour?” Joe asked wearily.

            “You can reschedule,” Pete said. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re _Joe Trohman_.”

            “That was only cool for the first two years,” Joe said. Pete, too chipper to be bothered by disagreement, kissed the top of Patrick’s head and ruffled his hair.

            “Get dressed, honey,” he said. “We’re going on an adventure.”

            Pete’s wording wasn’t entirely accurate, if anyone asked Patrick. His idea of adventure generally had been elevated to fighting monsters or playing Madison Square Garden, not wandering around Sacramento under alternating scorching sunlight and brisk winds, asking stupid questions of strangers.

            The idea, Pete had impressed on them, was that they were supposed to get a feel for the local vibe, see if people in the area had noticed a large number of children going missing. Patrick wasn’t sure if walking up to a stranger and demanding to know if a lot of their kids had disappeared the previous night was the best way to make friends, but he had anecdotal proof that it was a good way to get a lot of weird looks.

            When the four of them stopped and met up for their first non-catering lunch in weeks, Patrick was exhausted. In all the time he spent asking around, he hadn’t heard a single thing about missing children. Desperate, he had even gone to the police station and asked if there had been any more Amber Alerts recently, but as it turned out, he wasn’t legally allowed past the reception area, and no one wanted to speak to him.

            “We’ve got two more nights,” Pete said when it turned out that everyone’s stories were pretty much the same as Patrick’s. “There’s still time to find this thing.”

            Joe, possibly out of dedication to get home as soon as possible or possibly due to good leadership skills, found them a red-eye flight that night to Phoenix. That day, they scoured the surrounding small towns, hoping that the gossip there would be more helpful. There was still no sign of anything strange, and Patrick was feeling pretty hopeless when they returned to San Diego for their show that evening. Or, he was until he saw the sheepish expression on Pete’s face.

            “Son of a bitch you know where it is,” Patrick said all in one breath. He couldn’t tell if he was feeling more frustrated or fond.

            “KTC called me a few minutes ago,” he said. “And after yelling at us for splitting up-”

            “It’s broad daylight,” Joe muttered.

            “Dude, if our problems only existed in the dark I would learn to sleep twelve-hour nights,” Andy said.

            “After that,” Pete continued, somewhat forcefully, “He said that the latest reports appear to center on San Diego.”

            “Oh,” Patrick said. “Well, that’s convenient, but this city is still huge. Also, what disaster happened in San Diego?”

            “Wasn’t this entire city on fire a month ago?” Joe asked. Patrick had missed that, but in his defense, it seemed like California was sort of always burning.

            “Yeah, but I don’t know how close this thing happens to the natural disaster itself,” Pete said. “I mean, I don’t think it’s where the disaster originates? But I’m not sure. It’s not like we have a very clear idea on what’s taking these kids.”

            “And you think something is drawing the kids to it,” Joe added. “Like you mentioned with your demon band theory.”

            “It could still be a demon band.”

            “Where do you set up a tower of amps in a ghost town?”

            While the two of them bickered, Patrick caught the eye of one of the girls who worked on tour. A back up guitar tech, maybe, a roadie, or just another Island rep, he couldn’t be sure, but he reached out and grabbed her arm, smiling up at her as charmingly as he could.

            “Hey, weird question,” he said, and eyed the badge hanging down around her sternum, “Lucy: anything fun going on around her tonight? Other than the concert?”

            “Um,” she twisted her hair nervously, glanced at the band behind Patrick. “Well, I’m not from around here, so I don’t know, but I saw a flyer for a carnival in town. Three nights only.”

            “Three nights, huh?” Patrick said, trying to keep what almost felt like annoyance out of his voice. “Ahem, do you still have that flyer?”

            Pete and Joe had stopped bickering in the background, and based on the almost alarmed expression on Lucy’s face, they were probably staring at her pretty intently.

            “Um, yeah,” she said. “Hang on a sec,” she looked up and the sky and started digging around in her purse. After a moment, she pulled out a folded, slightly crumpled piece of black paper.

            “Tonight’s the last night,” she said as Patrick unfolded it.

            Patrick scanned the paper. It was pretty scant on information, simply telling him there was a carnival, three dates, an address, and at the very bottom, it said “Your chance to be a hero!”

            “That’s weird,” he said out loud.

            Lucy looked at the flyer over his shoulder.

            “Yeah, I thought so too. Don’t see many carnivals selling themselves as big getaways from work, but it sounds enticing, right?” she laughed a little. “Ah, you can keep that, I’ll be too busy tonight. See you around.”

            Patrick squinted at Lucy, then back down at the paper. There was nothing there that he hadn’t seen on his first look, just red letters on a black background. “CARNIVAL - THREE NIGHTS ONLY. YOUR CHANCE TO BE A HERO!” Something wasn’t right.

            “Pete,” he said. “What does that last line say?”

            “‘Protect the innocent and prove your bravery,’” Pete read, then frowned. “‘Prove your bravery,’ that’s a weird thing to say.”

            “Yeah, that’s not what it says for me and Lucy read something else entirely,” Patrick said. “Something’s wrong with this paper, and I think we know something’s wrong with this carnival. I think it’s trying to entice us into going. Whoever looks at it, it probably advertises something they want.”

            “Makes sense,” Joe said. “All I can read is ‘Ditch your workaholic friends and have fun on tour for once in your goddamn-’”

            “Jerk,” Pete tugged the paper back from him. “It’s north of here, but it says it opens at sundown and stays open till sunrise, so we could go after the show.”

            Joe shuddered. “Ugh, you know what I said earlier about this being a b-horror movie? I’ve changed my mind. We’re trapped in a Stephen King novel. I mean, seriously, a demonic carnival? That’s horrifying and cliche.”

            “If you see a clown in the sewer, don’t approach it,” Patrick said. Joe shuddered yet again.

            “I hate clowns. Do we honestly have to fight evil clowns?”

            “We have to at least show up and see what’s going on.”

***

            Andy tried to get some sleep before the show. He had dropped Carmilla off with her grandma for the last leg of the tour, not wanting to risk having her around those demon-things that looked too much like her dad and her uncles, and he was especially glad she was out of the way now. Lover of all things shiny and loud, Carmilla was just old enough to demand to go to the carnival with her dad, and Andy definitely didn’t want her around the sinister and unknown monsters that they were going to fight that night. In an undertone, Joe had suggested that Andy pack a weapon made from iron, but they still didn’t have any good guesses as to what they were going up against.

            So after the show, the four of them snuck out with Marcus’ reluctant permission, and started driving northeast towards the address listed on the flyer. It was late enough in the year that it was pitch-black outside long before the concert was over, giving way to the disturbing desert chill that Southern California always seemed to have after dark. Sunrise was a long ways away, so theoretically they would have plenty of time to scope out the place.

            “Oh, by the way,” Pete said from the passenger seat with no prompting after over fifteen minutes of silence. “Ryan’s meeting us there. Said he wants to talk about. You know. The things.”

            In a flippant, annoyed way, Andy hoped Ryan’s theory would be good enough to give the damn things a name. He hated the way they had to talk around them. They weren’t demons _exactly_ , weren’t doppelgangers _exactly_. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what they were, but he wanted a name at least.

            “Does Ryan know what, ah, type of carnival we’re meeting at?” Joe asked, keeping his face straight while sounding like he was already grinning.

            “I told him it was on business,” Pete said, defensive. “He was in a hurry, and he doesn’t have to fight if he doesn’t want to.”

            “And in the meantime he gets to enjoy all the hostility of the evil carnival,” Patrick said. “You’re so good at running a label, sweetie.”

            “See, you meant to sound sarcastic, but I know you aren’t lying,” Pete said, sounding too smug for his own good.

            The drive was pretty long, leaving Andy wondering yet again how they planned on getting to their final show the next day. After driving through the dessicated lawns of Californian suburbs for a while, he was shocked to see towers of light rising in the distance. Neon purples and greens swirled on the edge of the horizon, and Andy could just faintly hear the sound of shrieking people that was so common for local fairs. What really shocked him about the whole thing was that it wasn’t in the middle of the city and it wasn’t in the middle of nowhere-- it looked like it had actually been set up at a local fairground.

            He didn’t point it out, knowing the others wouldn’t really be able to see it yet, but as they got closer, all of them grew quiet. It didn’t look like a horror movie, not really. It just looked like a passing carnival.

            “This is… pretty tame,” Joe said. They drove by the chain link fence surrounding the carnival, and Andy caught sight of a ragged looking blue Tilt-a-Whirl. The rides had certainly seen better days, but they didn’t look any more ancient than from the 80’s. Even with the windows closed, he could smell sugar, lemons, and fried food. It was nicer than a county fair, he thought, noting all the large striped tents that rose up in clusters in the center. One tent, the tallest and largest of all of them, was a flat black, which seemed odd to Andy, but the rest of the carnival was familiar territory.

            There was a large parking lot made of string and old wooden posts set up on the dry grass outside of the carnival. Despite how full the park was of screaming and laughter and the general noise of human activity, the band had almost the full pick of spaces. The thought made Andy uneasy. There had to be lots of kids in there, and most of them too young to drive. Sure enough, in one corner of the parking lot there was a dump pile of bicycles, all of them varying in height.

            “I’m guessing most kids don’t tell their parents when they sneak out at midnight to go to the mysterious carnival?” Joe said, eyeing the bikes.

            “No, that would just make these guys too easy to track,” Pete agreed, his tone grim.

            “Alright,” Joe snapped into alpha mode as they sat in the parked car, lights off. “Pack light but sturdy. Don’t make it obvious to the ticket guy that you’re carrying in an arsenal. We stick within shouting distance, no matter what, and we do not go chasing leads on our own.” He paused, and gave Patrick an extra look.

            “What?!” Patrick asked.

            “Nothing, let’s go,” Joe said.

            It wasn’t until they were walking up to the ticket booth that Andy saw all the signs. Hand painted on wood, each of them had been affixed to the chain link and bore more normal carnival advertisements, ones he suspected did not change. One sign read: “Lemon Shake Ups! World’s Best Hot Dogs! Cotton Candy!” Another: “Fun Rides Only One Ticket Each!” A third read: “Experience the Mind Warping Mind Reader and House of Mirrors!” But Andy fixated on a black sign with red paint just over the top of the gate that read: “See the AMAZING Elephant Show! Bigtop On Every Hour and Half-Hour.”

            Andy stopped dead in his tracks.

            “Dude?” Joe was the first to turn, and Andy shook his head.

            “Uh-uh, no. I put up with a lot of shit from this band, and I do a lot of shit I’m not morally comfortable with for this band. I deal with all the tour buses. All of the fighting.” His lip curled back over his teeth as he pointed at the top sign. “But I am NOT going in there.”

            “Se-seriously?” Pete asked, looking thunderstruck. “They might be murdering children, but your moral qualm is-”

            “I am not paying money to watch animals get tortured,” Andy said, voice flat. “This is my line in the sand. No-fucking-way.”

            “Then… I’ll buy your ticket?” Pete said. He looked confused.

            “No,” Andy said. “I do not want any money going to this institution that can be avoided. Forget it.”

            His band looked frantic, but Andy’s stomach was churning. There were a lot of compromises to be made when you fought monsters, but Andy had seen enough Barnum and Bailey documentaries for a lifetime. He just couldn’t do it.

            “Look,” Patrick said, leaning into Andy a bit, “I promise we will get the animals out of here, okay? When we save the kids, we will save the animals as well. But people are in danger. Kids are in danger.”

            Andy glared at him. He didn’t want to go inside, didn’t want to set foot in that place. But he thought of Carmilla at home, and took a reluctant step forward.

            “Pete, you’re still paying, yeah?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Pete said, his voice clearly relieved. “Yes, thank you dude.”

            Andy glared at the sign as they walked up to the ticket booth. He was expecting a more traditional carny, perhaps a greasy looking man or something more… sinister looking. But the ticket booth, also all made of solid, sturdy looking wood, was inhabited by a very pretty girl with long, emerald green hair, and smooth brown skin. She was young, a teenager probably, and extraordinarily beautiful.

            “How much for four people?” Pete asked. She flashed a gleaming, wild sort of smile, and Andy regretted more and more letting Pete buy his ticket. The girl was gorgeous, with designs of wildflowers and leaves tattooed all up her arms. He could’ve gotten her number.

            “Entry is…” she paused and looked them over. “Five dollars each. Tickets are twenty-five cents each.”

            It seemed obscenely cheap for San Diego, but then again, it was targeted at children. Pete peeled a fifty dollar bill out and smiled a big, charming fae smile at her.

            “Four of us, and as many tickets as the rest of that will get us.”

            She returned his smile, and handed him an enormous roll of yellow tickets.

            “Have a good evening,” she said.

            Inside, the fried food smell was stronger and the laughter was louder. A ferris wheel was running a little faster than Andy was used to seeing ferris wheels run, the source of the purple-green glow he had seen earlier. There was a blue and silver striped tent with a wooden sign that advertised a “Mirror Maze,” and everywhere, everywhere, there were children.

            “So, where do we start looking?” Patrick asked after a minute. They started walking down one of the pseudo roads between all the stalls and tents and rides, but it was aimless wandering, so far as Andy could tell.

            “Let’s get a scope of the place first,” Joe said. “Look around. See if anything strikes us as immediately off. And, um, at some point we’re going to have to check out the circus thing they’ve got going on with the animals. You can wait outside if you want.”

            “Circus?” Patrick said. “Thought we were at a carnival.”

            “Yeah, a circus is like, the big top with the animals and the show and stuff,” Pete said. “Carnival is the whole thing.”

            “I thought it was the other way round.”

            “We could also stop and get something to eat first,” Joe added.

            The three of them could stop and have dinner first, Andy agreed mentally, but he didn’t bother saying it out loud. He didn’t really want… whatever it was they were serving here.

            “It’ll be like a date!” Pete said, then glanced at Andy and Joe. “With friends.”

            “It’s okay, you can admit your love for me,” Andy said, and Pete cackled.

            As they walked, they passed a large, open area, where the tent poles and spindly metal of attractions were lower to the ground. In the center, Andy saw an enormous carousel . It was very old, unlike the rest of the carnival, and looked heavy enough that it might be a permanent installation of the fairground. There were mirrored back walls, ornate horses on poles, and calliope music emanating from the thing even though it wasn’t spinning.

            “I’d mark that as something we need to look at,” Andy said. The others paused and looked over at the carousel as well. Pete jumped back as if he’d been shocked.

            “Okay,” he said, “That’s creepy looking.”

            “It could just be an old carousel,” Joe said. But it didn’t feel like a normal carousel. The painted eyes of the horses seemed a little too lifelike, the warm, vintage light bulbs a little too bright.

            “Either way,” Joe added quickly. “We should keep going.”

            And they truly meant to just keep walking, to not stop for anything, but the carnival was designed to be distracting. One little booth had the front facing tent flap rolled all the way up, and the woman inside who was covered in tattoos (literally covered, far more than Andy, with patterns of ink running all up her face and over her scalp, down to the nails of her hands) was selling crystal flowers. They looked exactly like real flowers, only carved from crystal and somewhat glowing. One tent, not open to people just passing by, advertised a garden of living statues that sounded fascinating. Some people were playing a game of life-sized chess. And then, so small Andy almost missed it, there was a little sign hanging over a small rectangle cut out of a tent that said, “Magical Mirror Maze.”

            Andy pointed it out, though he didn't want to.

            “What about it?” Pete asked.

            “We keep getting warned about mirrors,” Andy pointed out. “Maybe we ought to check.”

            “Don't you think that's a good reason not to check?” Joe asked.

            “But it could be important.”

            Joe sighed loudly and dramatically.

            “Yeah, okay, let's just pay a few tickets to walk directly into our own peril,” he said. “Might as well get it over with.”

            In spite of the sarcastic tone he said it with, Joe did lead the way into the hall of mirrors. A very thin woman with a solid black line painted across her eyes stood just inside, leaning on a podium and smiling.

            “Four?” she asked. Before they could answer, she drew back a second curtain to reveal the silvery glitter of too many mirrors facing back out at them. Pete handed her a handful of tickets, and she smiled at them, drawing the curtain back yet further.

            “Good luck,” she said, her mouth just a little too close to Andy’s ear. She giggled, and Andy hurried forward, eager to get away from her for some reason. He wasn’t Pete, he couldn’t read auras, but something about her felt overpowering.

            And then it was just the four of them, surrounded on all sides by reflections of themselves. He could feel himself and all of his band tense up. Now that they were here, surrounding themselves with more things that looked like them seemed like less than a good idea.

            It hadn’t been that bad, Andy told himself. It had been one brief battle. But staring back at more than one Patrick made him feel lightheaded. No one admitted this was a bad idea out loud, but he knew they could all feel it.

            “Only one way out, right?” Joe said bracingly. He started walking forward, and Andy followed immediately after. The place was so filled with mirrors tilted and shaped so oddly that he couldn’t tell where he was going, but could follow Joe just barely, telling the difference between him and his reflections in the minute details of texture in the real Joe.

            The four of them were silent as they walked by each distorted reflection, bouncing off of some mirrors as they tried to find the open space to walk through in any given section of the maze. It wasn’t until they were standing still in a large open space that Andy assumed to be a crossroads did he notice something really wrong.

            One of the reflections was moving, even though the four of them were standing still. Andy turned towards it slowly, feeling like he was caught in a horror movie.

            “Guys?” he whispered, but no one turned around with him. He stared at his reflection in one of the mirrors, slightly off color from all the rest, pale blue rather than silver. The reflection of him smiled out at Andy. His smile was scarlet. Blood filled the crevices between his teeth, stained the white, and dribbled out of the corner of the reflection’s lips. He held up one bloody finger to his mouth.

            “GUYS!” Andy shouted. He turned around and bolted after them, trying to grab Pete by the shoulder but running straight into a mirror instead.

            “Andy?” Joe shouted, much farther away than he should have been. Andy looked over his shoulder, and the reflection was farther away, but more and more blood kept pouring out of his mouth, dripping down his shirt and puddling on the ground at his feet. For a moment, he stared at the image, transfixed, and suddenly realized that blood was dripping out of the mirror and onto the ground.

            “GUYS!” he yelled again. He stumbled backwards and fell against someone. He jumped around, hands out and ready to fight, only to have Patrick catch his wrists.

            “Hey,” Patrick said. “What’s wrong?”

            Andy turned to point to the mirror, but the image was gone. It was just the four of them standing there, Andy’s eyes blown with fear. The blood was gone.

            “I… I guess I could’ve imagined it,” he said. “I just thought there was something in the mirror.”

            The three of his bandmates looked concerned, but not as terrified as Andy was still feeling.

            “Let’s just get out of here,” Joe said.

            They moved out of the house of mirrors quickly and without seeing any other strange things. Once they were out of the chilling atmosphere, Pete leaned into Andy so that their arms were touching as they walked.

            “What did you see?” he asked, and Andy shook his head.

            “Me, but all bloody,” he said. “Not one of the things, it was my reflection, but it wasn’t moving like me.”

            “Could be stress,” Joe said, but he didn’t say it like he believed it.

            “Well, we knew something was fucked up with us and mirrors,” Patrick said. “Let’s avoid going near that place as much as possible. It felt wrong in there.”

            No one disagreed.

            They walked deeper into the heart of the carnival. There was a word, Andy thought, for the strange little pathway between the tents and stalls, but he couldn’t remember it. Meanwhile, it seemed a little nicer the deeper they got further into the carnival. Where the front had been full of burned out neon and the smell of stale popcorn, the further back they got the cleaner the tents were. When they came to a small open area with picnic tables clustered in the center of a ring of food stalls, Andy felt the urge to buy a lemon shake-up, because the sugary lemon scent was getting better and better every passing minute.

            After seeing that the tickets could be used to pay for food, and Andy surprised Pete by also grabbing a handful. He headed to one of the food stalls to buy his lemon shake-up. Andy was aware that the longer they stayed at this carnival, the better everything seemed, but he wasn’t sure if it was a magical side-effect or not. He was still on his guard, but it didn’t feel like he was being enchanted. He didn’t feel like anything was off until he walked back to the tables, cup in hand, and saw someone familiar was already sitting at one of them.

            “Hey,” Ryan said, glancing up from a book. “Weird place to hang out, but points for originality. Aren’t you guys worried about getting recognized?”

            “Well, we haven’t yet,” Andy said. “You’re… probably early. Pete doesn’t tell us anything.”

            “I’m early,” Ryan agreed. “We were already in town when Pete sent me the address. And this is definitely the place something is going down. Really creepy vibe. But I couldn’t tell you what it is.”

            “Ryan!” Pete plopped down next to him and enveloped Ryan into a hug. Ryan mostly looked bored. He was also wearing glasses for some reason. They might have been Brendon’s glasses.

            “Missed you too,” Ryan said blandly. He pinched a fry out of a greasy cup Pete had set down. It looked like Pete had bought everything the carnival had to offer, judging by the smorgasboard of deep fried everything he had set down on the picnic table. A few seconds later, Patrick sat on Pete’s other side, setting down their drinks.

            “Hey, Pete said you had news about the thingies,” Joe said when he came up.

            “Straight to talking shop?” Ryan asked.

            “Come on, the suspense is killing me,” Joe said, sounding bored even as he said it.

            “Right, so,” Ryan grabbed another fry from Pete, and chewed while he spoke. “I’ve got a few theories, one likelier than the rest. You want least likely first?”

            “Please, build up the suspense more,” Joe said.

            “There’s a certain type of faery that can shapeshift,” Ryan said. “The fir darrig. Have you heard of them?”

            “Rats in tailcoats?” Pete asked. Ryan glanced up at him.

            “Well, that’s the default form for most of them, yes. But they’re shapeshifters and pranksters that play off of fear. Since you’ve had previous negative experiences with fae, I thought it was possible. But not probable.

            “So the next option is something called a tulpa,” Ryan said. Andy shivered a little. He noticed it was quieter where they were sitting, and chillier too, like they were in a bubble separate from the rest of the carnival. Ryan was mumbling, so Andy leaned in closer to hear him, and he noticed that he could barely hear the kids.

            “Tulpas are a type of thoughtform, usually a mirror of the self,” Ryan said. “They are created within the brain, and have full access to the brain of their creator. Traditionally they’ve been created through meditation to help unlock parts of the subconscious or allow a person to talk through a problem, use themself as a sounding board. They were created for the purposes of meditation and enlightenment, but they have been known to turn… bad.”

            “Well, that’s it then, isn’t it?” Joe said.

            “Probably not,” Ryan said. Andy deflated. “Everything else about them matches, but… you can’t create a tulpa by mistake. No one else can make one for you. Still… it’s a very close description. But unless you guys all willfully decided to create tulpas and either forgot or didn’t tell me, it’s unlikely.

            “The third option is the most likely.” Ryan’s face grew uncharacteristically grave, and he closed his book as if to emphasize the need for utmost attention. “What do you know about nineteenth century spiritualism?”

            All of them stared at him.

            “Assume we know nothing,” Patrick said.

            “Okay,” Ryan leaned in ever closer. They all were bent over the table then, huddled around each other in a small pocket of warmth. It was weirdly chilly, and the air was starting to smell increasingly smokey to Andy as the night went on, like the deep fryers had been burning for too many hours.

            “At the end of the nineteenth century, there was a boom in spiritualism in media,” Ryan said. “People brought back phantasmagorias for travelling shows, took ouija boards to parties, played free-writing games with the dead, all that stuff. It started getting big in England, with some very famous names you might have heard of. Arthur Conan Doyle was a big believer in the supernatural. Harry Houdini was actively trying to disprove it at every turn. Anyway, all this ghost stuff started big in England, and as most trends did then, it migrated to America.

            “The problem there was that there weren’t as many ghosts reported in America. I don’t know if there actually weren’t as many or if shitty white people just didn’t think Native Americans counted, but the consensus was that there weren’t enough ghosts to go around. So people wanted to create their own spirits, and not by murdering a bunch of people, which would create restless souls.

            “Second question: do you know what a poltergeist is?”

            “A type of ghost?” Andy guessed.

            “A type of energy that behaves like a malevolent ghost. I thought we were dealing with a poltergeist initially, when it couldn’t touch people, but I’ve changed my mind. Poltergeists are imprints like ghosts are, but they’re left by the living instead. Like ghosts and the dead, they’re left by powerful, endurant emotions. Most commonly by teenage girls.

            “Groups of spiritualists in America started trying to, essentially, create their own poltergeists. But poltergeists aren’t made on purpose, so these spiritualists… they accidentally created something new. Not quite a poltergeist, not quite a demon, not quite as subservient to the creators as they would have wanted. They called it an egrigor.”

            “Egrigor? That sounds like-”

            “Grigori,” Ryan said with a jerk of his head. “Yeah, I know. Unrelated, except for the fact they thought it was demonic and they weren’t too keen on fallen angels at the time. Egrigors are thoughtforms created by a group of people, powerful beings with only one real emotion, the one they were created with. Usually they can only harm their creators.”

            “Then that doesn’t work for the same reason tulpas don’t,” Joe said. Ryan shrugged.

            “It’s a flimsy theory, but… a very strong magician could invoke your physical presence without you being aware of it. If he had some genetic material of yours- blood or hair or nail clippings, I don’t know- he could invoke the ritual as a group. He could draw on your magic to give them the freakish amount of strength they have, and do it remotely.

            “It’s flimsy because he’d have to be unbelievably strong. And very angry at you. But it’s better than anything else I have.”

            “You think they’re egrigors?” Pete said.

            “I’m almost certain,” Ryan said. He grabbed another handful of fries, and his voice lost the intense, almost papery sound it had before. “I mean, physically strong, but with limitations. In your head. Nothing but angry, from how you’ve described it. It’s a close profile.”

            “Yeah, but who would be close enough to us and hateful enough to do that?” Patrick asked. “Close enough to get our _hair_?”

            “Any teenybopper with an eBay account and Mom’s credit card,” Ryan said blandly. “It could be anyone.”

            “But it isn’t a group,” Andy argued. “It’s not us, we didn’t… sign up for this.”

            “I know that,” Ryan said. “But magic is fickle. I don’t know if it would work like that, but my point is that it might. Tulpas are a very solo experience, but egrigors can be made by others. It’s all I’ve got so far.”

            “What all can you tell us about them, then?” Patrick asked. For all the food he and Pete had, next to none of it had been touched, other than the fries Ryan had been carving through.

            “Well,” Ryan swallowed hard. “They aren’t really tied down by many physical, human limitations. So, you know, sky’s the limit with your imagination, kind of.”

            “You’re going to need to be a hell of a lot more specific,” Pete said.

            “Typically egrigors are almost indistinguishable from poltergeists,” Ryan said. “They’re not, like, that powerful. But yours are, and I have a theory about that too that you aren’t going to like. Thing is, you guys are super powerful. Like, supernatural creatures inherently harness more power than, say, humans.” Ryan said, avoiding looking at Patrick as he spoke. “And you four are particularly powerful on top of that. Like, Pete’s full-blooded fae and not tied to any kind of court, which is a lot of unrestrained power. Joe’s got his whole super-alpha thing going on. There’s a lot of, like…. What’s it called? Like when you’re a kid, you learn about kinetic energy and-”

            “Potential energy,” Joe said.

            “Yes! Thank you,” Ryan said. “So if a strong magician were able to get genetic material from you four, and if he were able to harness the magic of you all, and if he were very angry and wanted to literally turn you against yourselves… then you’d have egrigors.”

            “That's a lot of ifs,” Joe said.

            “And it still doesn't make sense,” Patrick said. “By your logic, Pete and Joe's should be the strongest.”

            “No,” Ryan said. “It doesn't matter to you too where the magic comes from. You four are so tightly bound it's a wonder that the magic could differentiate itself into four separate beings.”

            “Bound how?” Pete asked. “Lots of people are in packs.”

            “Thrice bound,” Ryan said. His voice had taken on a dreamlike quality, and he was no longer absently reaching for food. “Four boys thricebound, living and dying by second chances… sorry. Prophecy. A good one, too, if you ever want to hear it. You're bound by fate, or prophecy,” Ryan said, tapping his own chest and grinning. “Bound by blood, or as you mentioned, pack. And bound by curse. Probably your dream thing. Could have been done by the same magician to make it easier to target all four of you at once.”

            “We were absolutely not aware of being ‘thricebound’,” Joe said, putting air quotes around the word. He looked a little panicked. “And, while we’re on the subject, I don’t like that. So unbind us.”

            Andy didn’t blame Joe for sounding upset, or for wanting to get rid of this. It felt suddenly invasive, like finding out that people had been watching him while he slept, almost. It didn’t change anything, but he didn’t like the idea of being so interconnected to the rest of his band that a spell couldn’t tell the four of them apart.

            “I can’t unbind you,” Ryan said. “I didn’t, like, come up with this myself. I don’t decide the prophecies for funsies. You, on the other hand, can rescind that whole pack thing anytime you want.”

            “No,” Joe said, then glanced down at the table, like he had said something embarrassing. Andy was quietly relieved.

            “Right, so you’re bound tight, egrigors are bad, we’ve been talking so long my throat’s sore,” Ryan said. He reached out to grab Andy’s lemon shake-up, and Andy snatched it back from him. Ryan gave him a sour look.

            “I copied all the pertinent information on the three beings into this,” Ryan said, passing a small notebook across the table. “Did you guys need anything else? This place kinda skeeves me out.”

            “You know what’s behind the kids disappearing?” Pete asked. He didn’t sound very hopeful.

            “Nah,” Ryan said. “But you should keep an eye on that carousel. There’s something wrong with that thing.”

            “Can you tell?” Pete asked. Ryan shrugged.

            “It’s just creepy looking,” he said. He waved everyone goodbye and walked out, leaving the four of them to pick at their food.

            “Egrigor,” Andy said out loud. The word felt foreign on his tongue, but maybe a little ominous. Like the name of some mountain you would come across in Mordor.

            “I’d like to make a proposal to the group,” Joe said. “That proposal is we think about this stuff later.”

            “I second the motion,” Patrick said. “We gonna explore the carnival? See if we can find clowns with too many teeth? Crying children? Do we know what we’re looking for?”

            “Just, you know, something bad,” Pete said. He looked distant and a little troubled. Possibly he, like Andy, was still shaken by Ryan. “But yeah, we should explore. We could go ride the rides?”

            “Gross,” Patrick wrinkled up his nose. “I hate roller coasters. I’m out.”

            “A Tilt-a-Whirl isn’t even in the same class as a roller coaster,” Pete said.

            “We shouldn’t split up,” Joe insisted.

            “We can split in two,” Andy suggested. “I’ll wait here.”

            “You sure?” Joe asked.

            “Somehow I think I will survive without going on some crappy fair rides,” Andy said. That was all it took to get Pete and Joe standing up, both of them looking thrilled.

            “Will you win me a stuffed animal while I’m gone?” Pete asked Patrick, grinning wide. Patrick rolled his eyes and didn’t even look up at him.

            “Those games are a scam,” he said. Pete gave him an overexaggerated pout and squeezed his shoulder. Andy glanced around and- right, even if they weren’t in front of a crowd of Fall Out Boy fans, it was still a crowd. Not the best place for kissing.

            The two of them weren’t even out of sight when Andy saw Patrick throwing furtive glances at a bottle toss game not far from them. He snorted, and Patrick looked back at him, clearly embarrassed.

            “What?” he snapped.

            “You’re gonna go win him a stuffed animal, aren’t you?” Andy asked. Patrick looked furious, but he didn’t say anything to deny it. Andy burst out laughing, bent over so that his chest crushed against the sticky wooden table. No one else was sitting near them, so he felt free to be as loud and mean as he wanted.

            “I don’t make a habit of using this word, but you’re whipped,” he said. Patrick flushed.

            “I love him! And it’ll make him smile! Leave me alone!” He stood up and stalked away from the table, but walked slowly enough that Andy could catch up with him. The booth wasn’t far away, but Andy didn’t want to lose sight of him.

            He didn’t go right up next to Patrick. He got close enough to see the basic set-up of the game: a little more old-fashioned than he would have expected, with a wooden ball and actual glass jugs painted white to look like milk jugs stacked up in pyramids for people to try and knock over. Then again, a lot of things at this carnival seemed a little antique. Instead of watching Patrick play, Andy peered around the side of the stall, looking down another long path through different stalls and entrances to tents. It seemed to go on forever, kids coming and going, women dressed in strange outfits…. Andy frowned, and squinted. The pathway seemed to go on forever.

            He was still scowling down, trying to focus as hard as he could when someone bumped into him from behind. Andy jumped around and saw Patrick beaming. He was holding a large stuffed purple kangaroo, and looking exceedingly proud of himself.

            “What now?” he asked.

            “You’re right, I’m the embarrassed one here,” Andy said, but his heart wasn’t in it. Patrick gave him a questioning look.

            “I can’t see where the tents end,” Andy said, pointing down the dirt road. Patrick looked down where Andy pointed, leaning forward like that could help him see better.

            “Your eyes are better than mine,” Patrick said. “But I can’t see the end either.”

            “Yeah, this field wasn’t that big,” Andy said. “So what the fuck is up with this place?”

            “I hate to say it,” Patrick said, “But I think we ought to check out the main show here.”

***

            The carnival had rides scattered throughout, but the first ride Pete and Joe came across was an old, creaking “Pharaoh's Fury.” An enormous boat painted with racist caricatures of Egyptian pharaohs on either end, it hung from a pendulum, and once riders were seated inside, the boat swung back and forth until it swung all the way upside down. It was terrifying, and Joe’s absolute favorite. Pete looked green before they even got in line.

            “I hate these things,” he said. He felt more like a kid who was nervous than hateful, so Joe didn’t feel too bad about ribbing him.

            “Scared of heights?” he asked.

            “Yes,” Pete said. “When it could tip me out and dump me on the concrete. That thing doesn’t look stable to me. Does it look stable to you?”

            “I am so sure this thing is stable,” Joe said. Above them, the boat had reached the top of its arc across the flat-black sky, and the crowd inside was screaming. The boat swung down past them, wind roaring across their faces, and the screams got louder and then quieter again as it flew up the other side. “We’ve got to sit on the end.”

            “Where’s one of those spinning-rides that flattens you to the wall when you need one,” Pete muttered. Finally, the group before them filed off, giggling and delighted, and Joe dragged him to the very end of the boat. Part of this was a practical and tactical decision. They’d get the best view of the fairgrounds from that high up. He could see the place from above and start to figure out where something more sinister might be hiding.

            But more importantly, the ride was much more fun from the ends of the ride. And he kind of wanted to see Pete vomit, which would be awesome revenge for the first few years of knowing him.

            Joe tried to keep a general eye on the people around him while they waited for the ride to start moving. It was made up mostly of kids and young teenagers, but there were some people there that had to be closer to his age, in their late teens and early twenties. No parents though, he noted. He supposed that Andy technically counted as a parent, but there were no real parents, like the weary adults that trailed after their kids at Disneyland, or all the local fairs that Joe had been to.

            The ride started slow, wobbling back and forth the way a swing slowly started moving. Now that they were actually in their seats Pete looked sort of eager. The whole experience of the boat getting faster and making ever wider arcs wasn’t exactly as thrilling as Joe remembered it being from when he went to a local fair when he was eleven, but it was still fun. Fun enough that he almost forgot to look out over what seemed to be a fairly normal carnival. The only point of interest was a huge, smooth black tent in the heart of the fairgrounds, with a small red globe at the very top of it. It was a little odd looking, like an obelisk in an otherwise normal military cemetery, but not innately threatening.

            Because he was determined to enjoy himself, and because the odds of Pete getting to ride many roller coasters for the rest of his life was slim if he was with a guy like Patrick, Joe dragged him onto a few more. The ever-beloved tilt-a-whirl, the Scrambler, with sparkly pink and blue seats that sent Pete slamming into Joe with every turn. They stopped at a few of the rides nearest them, but the lines were always just short enough to get Joe excited for the ride to come. It wasn’t until they were waiting behind five other teenagers in front of a ferris wheel when Joe saw the first thing he marked as extremely odd.

            A young girl, maybe thirteen or fourteen, was standing outside of the line on the other side of the temporary fence. There were tears in her eyes. Cheap makeup ran blurrily down her cheeks and her arms were crossed as she stared up at the ferris wheel. The girl looked haggard, like she hadn’t slept in days, and her fingers looked like they were twitching where they lay on her arms. Most distressing, under her arms her stomach looked round and full, and almost certainly pregnant.

            “Hey,” Joe leaned over the fence and closer to her, trying to keep his voice low. “Hey, sweetie, are you okay?” He cringed as soon as he spoke. He wasn’t nearly old enough to be calling teenagers “sweetie,” and he hadn’t meant to talk down to her, but she was just so young.

            The girl sniffed, glared up at him. She took one look at him, rolled her eyes, and turned away.

            “Hey,” Joe tried again. The line started moving, but he held Pete’s arm and motioned the kids behind them forward. He reached out and brushed her arm. “Seriously, are you alright?”

            “Do I look it?” she snapped. She held one of her hands up to her mouth like she was going to chew her nails but seemed to just suck on her fingers instead. “I’ve been stuck here for days.”

            Joe felt the usual kick in the chest sensation that came with something obviously wrong happened. He jumped over the fence and leaned in. The girl pulled back, nervous.

            “Stuck here?” he asked. She didn’t take her fingers out of her mouth as she leaned back, nodding up at him.

            “My friends and I came here days ago,” she said. “Nobody else seems to notice. My phone stopped working, and the sun doesn’t rise, but I know it’s been days. I just want to go home and see my parents again.” Her breathing got shallower, like she was about to start crying hard again, and Joe pulled her in- gently- for a hug. She leaned against him, chest shaking.

            “I’m so tired, but we never sleep, and none of my friends think anything is wrong,” she said, voice slightly muffled by his t-shirt.

            “We’re gonna figure this out, okay, sweetie?” Joe said. The endearment felt a little better this time, like he had earned it, and she nodded into his chest. He glanced over at Pete, who had apparently scrambled over the fence alongside him. His face was one of nothing but paternal concern, but the girl hadn’t seemed to notice or be offended by this.

            The three of them started walking, Joe making sure the girl was sandwiched between the two of them, like it could better protect her from whatever dangers they were facing. While they walked, they talked, in part because the girl was calmer when she was speaking, and also to hear the story of the only distressed looking person there.

            Her name was Fiona, and she was from Ohio. Joe had never heard of the little town she named, and she waved a hand at that, unsurprised. Her town was, according to her, home to corn fields, meth heads, and not much else. She and her friends saw an advertisement for the carnival three days before it came into town, and all of her friends had felt an almost unnatural pull to go there, to see the place. Almost everyone who saw the poster felt this pull, from what she’d heard, but she didn’t, and she knew that even the most goody-two-shoes kids kept the information from their parents.

            Fiona felt nervous about the idea of going, but she wanted to get out of the house, and her friend’s older sister had a car.

            “We’d been fighting,” she said in a low, miserable tone. They were barely moving forward as they walked, she slumped so much and dragged her feet across the dirt. “My parents and I had been fighting… a lot, ever since.” She didn’t finish talking, but she glanced down at her stomach. She was quiet for a moment, then in a quieter voice, said, “I think that’s why I’m different. I think the kid makes me immune, somehow, but I don’t know how. Guess I’ve got a reason to be grateful to the little guy. But I wish it hadn’t made things so rough with me and my mom.”

            So Fiona had gone to the carnival, and it had been fun at first. The minor thrill of rule-breaking and being out after curfew, the novelty of being at a carnival overnight, the shows and attractions and rides, it had all been good, but she had worn out. The problem arose when no one else wanted to go home.

            “I was sure it was getting late,” she said. “But the sun hadn’t come up, and everyone swore we’d leave when the sun came up. But it never does. I don’t know what this thing is, or where we are, but it gets worse every day. Like the hall of mirrors-- something’s wrong with that place, and I don’t know what does it, but none of the others see it. I don’t even know where they are anymore. I’m so tired that I can’t keep up with them.”

            “Fiona,” Pete took her hand and stared into her eyes, radiating calming energy so strong that Joe could feel the excess past her. “You know we’re not in Ohio anymore, right?”

            Fiona looked between the two of them with eyes more resigned than horrified.

            “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Or, I figured. It’s a travelling carnival. Except we never moved. I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve got theories.”

            “You do?” Pete asked.

            Fiona shrugged, shifting her curls back behind her shoulders.

            “It’s some kind of monster thing, like a horror movie,” she said. “It wants kids, and I’m immune because I’m a mom. Or, I’m gonna be,” she said, glancing down at the ground. “Anyway, it’s like, I don’t know, Peter Pan but evil. Kidnapping lost boys and girls. Or like that old poem- you know the one? ‘Come away, O human child/ to the waters and the wild-’”

            “‘With a faery hand in hand/ for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand,’” Pete finished gravely. Joe turned to him, eyes narrowed, but Pete’s expression gave away nothing. Faery. It figured, but the place looked so normal. The fae restaurant in London had been obviously magical. But this carnival was, aside from the string of disappearances and the magical flyer, just a carnival. It didn’t seem… stylish enough to be fae.

            “Yeah,” Fiona said. “The Stolen Child. Kids with nowhere better to go end up here. So that’s my story, and my theory. What about you guys? Aren’t you kind of… old to be here? And do you believe me?”

            “We are and we do,” Joe said. “As a matter of fact, we’re here to save the day.”

            Fiona rose one eyeliner-darkened eyebrow with the kind of quiet scathing that only middle school girls could pull off.

            “Fantastic,” she said, and only sounded a little sarcastic. “I feel like this isn’t what most girls mean when they say Fall Out Boy saved their life.”

            “It’s more common than you think,” Joe said. “Let’s go find Patrick and Andy. I think we should check out that big-top show and see if anything’s especially evil in there.”

            The three of them picked up the pace, and had been walking for a few minutes before Joe started to get nervous. All the tents and stalls they were passing looked different, some selling necklaces and others offering tarot readings, but there were none that he recognized from earlier.

            “The food court place,” Joe said. “That’s gotta be nearby, right?”

            “I dunno,” Fiona shrugged. “This place likes to move. That’s why it’s so easy to lose people.”

            Pete and Joe exchanged a glance.

            “Yeah, we really can’t afford to be losing people right now,” Joe said. “This place isn’t that big, right?”

            “It changes,” Fiona said. She seemed petulant, and Joe could feel the thrum of his heartbeat behind his ears.

            “Thanks for the help,” he muttered. He started striding forward faster, Fiona half-running to keep up with them.

            “Slow down!” she shouted.

            “Not till we find them,” Joe said back.

            He was just starting to work his way into a proper panic when he rounded a corner past a large booth where you could play to win goldfish, running directly into Andy.

            “Jesus Christ,” Andy said mildly once they separated themselves. “We’ve been looking for you.” 

            “How long?” Joe asked.

            “An hour or so?” Patrick said. “Our phones don’t work. Listen, there’s something up about this place.”

            “Yeah, tell me about it, this girl’s been here since they were in Ohio!” Joe said, pointing at Fiona.

            “There’s no end to this place,” Andy said. “It just keeps going, and we can’t figure out how far it goes.”

            “Is that… is that a stuffed animal?” Pete asked. Joe glanced at Patrick, who looked a little flushed. Sure enough, he was holding something behind his back. Sheepishly, he held out a stuffed kangaroo in a fluorescent shade of purple.

            “You won me a prize?” Pete asked. Joe thought he’d never heard anyone sound so delighted.

            “It’s not a big thing, I was bored,” Patrick said. He rolled his eyes for good measure. Pete beamed.

            “You won him for me!” he exclaimed.

            “Come on, we’ve got bigger issues!” Patrick said. The tips of his ears were pink under his hat, but he looked otherwise laser focused. “What’s up with this place?”

            Joe and Pete made eye contact again, and Joe took in a deep breath.

            “Fae, we think,” he said. “But it’s hard to be sure.”

            “Fae have a history of kidnapping children,” Pete said. “I’ve just never heard of them taking, you know, so fucking many.”

            “Language,” Fiona said, her voice flat and probably sarcastic. She was giving Pete and Patrick strange looks, but whatever, they could deal with that later. “Wait, fae as in faery? What do you guys know about all that?”

            “Plenty,” Joe said. “Don’t worry too much about it. Have you seen the main show?”

            “Yeah,” Fiona said. She was scuffing the dirt underfoot with the toe of her shoe. “It’s the most normal thing about the place, though. Acrobatics and animal tricks and stuff. I go there to nap sometimes. You think it’s important?”

            “I think it’s in the center of this place,” Joe said. “And knowing magic bullshit the way we do, that’s got to mean something.”

            “Well, that one I can find for you,” Fiona said. “It’s the easiest thing to find. Come on.”

            Despite how uncomfortable Joe had felt at the idea of leaving Fiona out in the open, she herself seemed completely unafraid leading the way through the carnival. Being stuck in the thick of danger for so long had possibly numbed her, or maybe she still didn’t understand how dangerous the situation was. Joe was almost certain that she didn’t.

            Fiona wove her way through the crowd with ease, glancing up from time to time and inhaling deeply, like she was sniffing the air.            

            “So, ah, what exactly is it that you’re looking for?” Joe asked her eventually. Fiona shrugged again and gave him a bemused look.

              “It always kinda smells like pennies around the big top,” she said. “Plus, sometimes you can see it from a distance. And then, on top of all that…” her face grew even more drawn. “Usually it wants to be found.”

              “Man, anybody ever tell you you’re like, a twin sister away from being as creepy as the girls from the Shining?” Joe asked. Patrick elbowed him, but Fiona just laughed.

              “You’ll get used to it around here if you don’t save the day,” she said. “After a few days, you get used to it. Anyway, the place is right over there.”

              Joe looked up and saw the all black tent, its front flaps tied open so that people could file in and out. While all the tents were big enough to fit plenty of people inside, and some, like the mirror one, were large enough to get lost in, this tent could put some of the stadiums they’d played in to shame. Wooden stands rose up on all sides but the entrance, and a few benches were sunk into the ground. The stage had been dug out in the center of the tent and marked by silver and red designs that must have been spray painted on the ground. It was grand, but not especially ornate.

              “This it?” Joe asked. Fiona snorted.

              “Yeah, wait till the show starts,” she said. “C’mon, the best seats are lower down, but sometimes they call up for audience participation, and I’m guessing you guys don’t want that till you know more about this, right?”

              “You got it,” Joe said. “So we want to go up to the top?”

              “Yeah, no one will be all the way up there but you,” Fiona agreed. “I’ll come with. Just in case this works, I don’t want to get so lost that I don’t make it out.”

              They climbed a narrow, rickety set of stairs that led to the top row of seats, and for good measure, moved far from the staircase, just to lower their odds of being noticed. The tent filled up quickly, kids chattering loudly as nearly every seat was taken. This surprised Joe, because nothing at this carnival ever felt in demand, but everything was always full of kids. He couldn’t really imagine what kind of magic could do that, but it had to be powerful.

              The lights (and how was it that Joe hadn’t even noticed the lights in there before? Huge, dusty globes that hung from the top of the tent, and he had no idea how) all went down at once. Rather than a hush falling over the ground, some of the kids screeched, some started giggling, and the noise, if anything, increased in intensity.

              “I’m getting flashbacks to high school assemblies,” Patrick whispered in Joe’s ear. One lone spotlight shone down on the center of the dirt floor, illuminating a man standing alone in the darkness. Reminiscent to Brendon Urie’s ringleader outfit from Panic’s music video, he wore an overly fancy tailcoat and top hat, but all of his clothes were the same matte black as the tent, and his hat was a glistening crimson red. There was no microphone that Joe could see, but the man’s voice was sonorous as he spoke.

              “Hello, hello, hello!” He took a step forward, the spotlight following him exactly, narrowed intimately on only him. “And welcome to the show.”

              With a grand sweep of his arms, lights lit up the whole makeshift stage. Though it had to still be made up of dirt and sawdust and spray paint, it now appeared as solid and glittering as the rides outside. The whole lit up area was filled with dancers, some on the ground and some twisting through the air on ropes, music swelled all around the tent, and all the performers moved in perfect unison. The only thing wrong with the picture, only notable to Joe because he had eyesight as good as he did, was that they were all children. Not young children, no, they looked about the size he would expect of circus performers, but they definitely weren’t adults.

              Still, if Joe thought this was pertinent information to share with his band, there wasn’t a free second to do so. The music was overwhelmingly loud, and the show never seemed to slow down. It moved rapidly from what could have passed for an opening number in a musical to a show dedicated to trapeze artists and some dancers suspended from silk ropes. After they all had spun their way to the ground, a series of teenagers crossed a tightrope, and then did a series of complicated gymnastics across that same rope. The rope itself was nearly eye level with the band, at least seventy feet above the hard-packed earth, and there was no safety net that Joe could see, even with his incredibly good eyesight.

              Tightrope acrobatics were followed by an elephant stomping into the tent, at which point Joe could feel Andy tense up next to him. The animal didn’t look injured, Joe was relieved to see, but it did look too big, even for an elephant, and it seemed to Joe to be drugged. Something in the glazed over look of the elephant’s eyes, the sluggish movement of its tail and trunk even when it walked around the ring with determined purpose, it didn’t look entirely normal. If not drugged, hypnotized, he thought, though somehow the idea of hypnotizing an elephant sounded even less believable to him.

            Next came lions that also marched around the ring with the same stiff obedience, almost drugged, but not quite. They moved in complete uniformity, their legs all moving at the exact same time, their heads swaying from side to side. It was so choreographed that it would have looked more in place in the Lion King than in real life, but they were definitely real lions.

            Just like in the house of mirrors, Joe couldn’t put his finger on _what_ was unsettling, he just knew something was. Everyone and everything moved a little too perfectly, a little unreal, and yet it was all beautiful and dazzling.

            After the animals were gone and the applause had somewhat died down, the ringmaster came back out into the middle of the stage, a vague hush falling over the crowd this time. The man smiled, his expression so glittering that it was apparent even to Joe in the top of the stands. Next to him, he felt Patrick tense up. He turned and saw Patrick squinting down at the man, looking concerned, but before he could ask, the man was speaking again.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming out tonight!” he said. “We have one last portion of the show for you to see today: a magic show. Who would like to volunteer?”

            Most of the children in the crowd raised their hands, some bouncing in their seats and others standing up all the way, waving their arms. And yet, in spite of all that, Joe could have sworn that the ringmaster looked directly at them. Joe could feel the heat of the man’s eyes.

            “How about these young ladies in the front!” he yelled at last, after waiting and staring for far too long. He turned back down to people sitting closer to the front, and Joe let out a long, low exhale. They were okay. Still, somewhere in the back of his mind, the quiet paranoia that the ringleader knew they were here wouldn’t stop nagging at him.

            “Now, miss, if you could just step up here,” the man held out his hand and helped the first girl up onto a low platform. She wavered a little, then stood up straight. The man climbed up next to her and pulled a necklace out of his jacket pocket with a huge red jewel on the end of it.

            “I need you to focus very hard on this ruby, all right?” he said. He turned to the audience. “What we are going to do is hypnotize Amanda here, and then she will help me perform a little magic trick. So, Amanda, you’re focusing on the gem, yes?”

            “Yes,” the girl said. She was almost whispering as her eyes followed the jewel back and forth as it swung, but Joe could hear her perfectly.

            “On the count of three, you will fall into a deep sleep,” he said. His voice sounded a little snappy for a hypnotist routine, but no one seemed to notice. “One, two,” for a split second, he glanced up at their group again, “Three.”

            The girl slumped forward, her hair dangling and her arms limp. Patrick shifted his weight and drew backwards, and the distraction was more than a little annoying to Joe.

            “Now, darling,” the man helped the second girl up onto the platform and laid her down on a long, low table. “Have you seen the trick where the magician saws someone in half?”

            Joe clenched his hands around the bottom of the bench he was sitting on. This couldn’t be good, but he had no idea how he could stop it either. It felt like everything had sped up very suddenly. The hypnotized girl was beckoned forward, a long saw placed in her hands. She lowered it slowly towards the torso of the other girl. And then the girl on the table began screaming.

            Joe was frozen in his seat as the girl getting sawed in half screamed bloody murder. Meanwhile, the other girl continued sawing without any signs of hesitation. The girl’s screams suddenly cut off and blood spattered heavily across the stage. A fine mist of it blew out from the girl’s torso whenever the saw moved back and forth across her body. And no one, not a single person in the crowd reacted, or ran forward to help. In the last stroke of the saw, the ringmaster took off his hat and waved it over the top of the girl, and the lights flickered for the first time. The table fell apart and the two halves of the girl’s body separated from each other. Unlike in any kind of magic show Joe had seen before, there was still quite clearly blood pouring out of the two open halves of the girl, a quivering red mass on either side that painted the floor dark red.

            “Well, that’s not right!” the ringmaster cried out to the audience. “What if I take it… this way?”

            He waved his hat back across the girl, in the other direction, and the table halves flew together. All of the blood flew up off the floor, and suddenly the girl was completely intact, her skin and clothes both knit back together.

            “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you!” the ringmaster shouted. He bowed again, and the stage lights went dark. When all the lights in the tent came back, there was nothing left in the center of the big top, and the whole crowd began chatting loudly again. Joe turned to Pete as quick as he could, and saw by the dire expression on Pete’s face that something had gone just as terribly wrong as he thought it did.

            “She died,” Joe said. It was a question, but it didn’t come out that way.

            “I think so,” Pete said. “Whoever was on stage a second ago.. It wasn’t her.”

            “They killed her?” Fiona gasped, and the whole band leaned in to shush her. The last thing they needed was to attract any more attention. She quickly covered her mouth, but her eyes were still wide and frightened.

            “Come on,” Joe said. “Let’s get out of here.”

            The five of them tried to find a relatively quiet corner of the carnival, somewhere between the tents and stalls where it wasn’t bustling with people who could listen in on their conversation. Pete was still clutching the purple kangaroo to his chest, but otherwise looked serious.

            “Does anyone have any idea what this could be?” Joe asked.

            “This seems like fae, right?” Andy said. “Somehow?”

            “Well, it could be-” Pete stopped himself mid-sentence, his gaze frozen on something just above Joe’s head. Joe spun around, expecting something horrific, but there was nothing behind him. Just the fabric side of the tent, and crawling across it, one small-

            “Salamander,” Pete whispered. “Oh my god. Oh my god that’s a salamander. Oh fuck, this is bad.”

            “What’s wrong with the lizard?” Patrick asked.

            “I think it’s an amphibian,” Fiona said.

            “It’s a FUCKING SALAMANDER!” Pete screamed, his voice hoarse and without volume in spite of the clear panic in it. “Jesus, we have to get out of here.”

            Pete started walking away as quickly as he could move. The salamander scuttled off, and Joe followed after Pete. They all tried to keep up with him as he pushed his way through the crowd.

            “What’s so scary about the reptile?” Joe asked.

            “Amphibian!” Fiona insisted.

            “FAE!” Pete shouted, then drew in closer, fear tangible in his eyes. “Not just any fae, but Unseelie. This is Unseelie court, and we walked right goddamn into the middle of it.”

            “Slow down,” Patrick said. He didn’t sound panicked at all, and he was completely firm and steadfast as he grabbed Pete’s arm and stared him down, a silent plea for him to calm down and breathe. “We’ve been here for hours, so a couple more minutes won’t hurt. What’s going on?”

            Pete stepped closer still, so all of them were standing close together in a tight circle.

            “Salamanders _are_ a type of amphibian,” he admitted, (Fiona looked pleased with herself) “but they can also be a type of faery. Specifically, they’re Unseelie. I don’t know how indigenous salamanders are to San Diego, so it could just be a regular animal, I guess, but it made me realize some of the other stuff we saw. All the people working here, they’re all types of Unseelie fae, the darker creatures, the violent ones. The ringmaster- god, it’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t see it while he was in there. He’s got to be the one in charge. He’s a redcap.”

            If Pete meant this to be a terrifying revelation, he must have been extremely underwhelmed by the response it got. Joe certainly had no idea what a redcap was, and from the looks on everyone else’s faces, neither did they.

            “Isn’t that a creature from Harry Potter?” Fiona asked after a moment of confused silence. Pete closed his eyes and took a longsuffering breath.

            “It’s a type of faery,” he said. “The most violent type I know of. They’re fae of battle and bloodlust, and they need to kill regularly. Not for food or anything, they just like it. The red hat, that’s part of the legend. Every time they kill, they soak their hat in the blood of their most recent victim. And this particular one looks like he’s getting a kid once every hour for that fucking big top show. That was the fucking magic trick. He ran his hat under the spray of her blood.”

            Joe felt a little sick at the memory. That vivid scarlet was blood, the fresh blood of children.

             “What else is there here?” Patrick asked. He was still steadfast and calm, though his voice had gotten a little more urgent. Pete shook his head, staring down at the trampled-flat grass.

            “I don't know,” he said. “The workers, they must be fae, they all had weird traits but… I don't know much about Unseelie court. Most of the creatures here don't look monstrous, but then again, they could be using glamours to look more human.”

            “Why the kids?” Patrick pressed on, rather than lingering. “If it's just to kill one a night, why keep all of them trapped like this?”

            “It's a fae thing,” Pete said. He looked sickened and suddenly refused to meet Fiona's eyes. “All fae have had… connections with humans. But whereas seelie court sees them as either enemies or… I don't know, temporary lovers, Unseelie fae see humans as entertainment. They keep them as pets, or as slaves. Most of them keep at least one human to…” he trailed off. Joe could feel the disgust and horror coming off Pete, feel it through the bond.

            “Sometimes it's just like a pet. They're treated fondly, if second class. Best case scenario.” Pete was having difficulty breathing. “And they typically take children. Raise them away from home so they don't know any better.”

            “Great, how do we stop it?” Joe asked.

            “No fucking clue,” Pete said. “This place- it's so big, it has to be the court. But I've never heard of one moving like this.”

            “I thought faeries moved around all the time,” Fiona said. “Like, the faery hills and mushroom circles, all that stuff. Didn't they travel all around Ireland in the old stories?” Then, upon seeing some dubious looks, she added, “I’m pregnant, not illiterate.”

            “Traditionally, yeah,” Pete agreed. “But they're supposed to move around less. And the court doesn't move.”

            “It might not be the court, then,” Fiona said.

            “She's got a point,” Joe said.

            Pete frowned, and Joe didn't blame him. It was definitely not a pleasant thought. This carnival was enormous, much bigger than he'd initially thought, and if this was only a fraction of the Unseelie court…

            “Okay, so let's think,” Patrick said. “They're fae. They like formalities. Which means the best way to get them is to get their leader. Where would the queen be?”

            “The redcap would know,” Pete said. “They're usually lackies, but if he's in a position like that… he must know her.”

            “Great, should be easy,” Joe said sarcastically. “All we have to do is jump the super powerful war faery and interrogate him while staying subtle. You know, in front of a crowd of hundreds of spectators.”

            “Where do you suppose the dressing room is at a circus?” Patrick asked. He frowned. “Dressing tent?”

            “Why don't you guys just volunteer for the magic trick?” Fiona asked. “You could get right up next to him and someone else could knock out the lights.”

            “And saw each other in half in the process?” Joe asked. “I'd rather not risk it. I'm still a little susceptible to charmspeak.”

            “But I'm not,” Patrick said.

            “What do you-?”

            “I’ve seen that guy before,” Patrick said. “It was some stupid field trip to see a hypnotist when I was younger. He got pissed that he couldn’t hypnotize me. At the time I thought hypnosis was like, just a hoax, but now… I mean, Pete has trouble using charmspeak on me too.” he shrugged. “I’m human. I could go up there.”

            “If we sat in the front row, we could jump in pretty fast,” Joe said, thinking out loud. “I could shoot out the lights and we could be right there if anything went wrong.”

            “Are the rest of you not human or something?” Fiona asked.

            “Don’t worry about it,” Andy said. “Pete?”

            “It’s risky, but technically they’ll know he’s human, so it isn’t impossible,” Pete said. “We’d have to move fast, though. And find someone to get the other volunteer out of the way without hurting them.”

            “I’m right here,” Fiona said. “Why not me?”

            “Way too dangerous,” Pete said. “We don’t want you getting killed.”

            “Well, too bad.” Fiona crossed her arms. “I’m gonna help save the day. When do we go back in?”

            “Now, assuming we’re not too late,” Joe said. “Get this over with and all that. I’m a good enough shot to get the lights, assuming they’re made of something that, you know, a bullet can break.”

            “They’ll be shutting the tent soon. The front seats might already be filled,” Fiona said.

            “We can wait for the next show if they are,” Joe said.

            But they didn’t have to wait, and Joe hadn’t really expected them to anyway. There were five empty seats in the front row, courtesy of some typical fae bullshit, Joe guessed. Patrick or Andy might’ve been naive enough to call it magic, but it was some fae bullshit.

            Sitting in the front made for a whole different show, but Joe knew what to expect this time. The show felt fuzzier and more unnerving the second time watching it, the acts running into each other one after the next at a rapid pace. Anxiety was growing in Joe’s stomach as they waited for the magic show.

            Joe saw the ringmaster’s mouth moving when he asked for volunteers, but he could barely hear it over how tense he was. He only saw Patrick and Fiona raise their hands out of the corner of his eyes, not daring to turn and look at the two of them. Predictably, the ringmaster waved them both forward.

            “Patrick,” the ringmaster said, the name echoing around the tent. “Follow the ruby with your eyes. Are you focused on the gem?”

            “Um, yes,” Patrick said. It wasn’t a very convincing phrase, so Joe did not blame the ringmaster for glaring.

            “On the count of three, you will fall into a deep sleep,” he said. His voice sounded more like a warning than like a hypnosis. “One. Two. Three.”

            Patrick’s head slumped forward, a little delayed, but more convincing than his voice had been. Meanwhile, the ringmaster led Fiona up onto the platform with him.

            “Oh, ho!” the man cried. “I see we have one more participant than usual!” He gestured to Fiona’s stomach, and she cringed away from him slightly, smiling tightly.

            “The more the merrier, right?” she asked faintly, and the ringmaster laughed a jovial laugh, all the audience joining in.

            “Indeed, indeed, my dear girl. Now, Fiona, if you will just lay down on this table for me…”

            Joe hadn’t realized before that the ringmaster never asked for the volunteers’ names, and had merely said them as he performed his trick. That could not possibly be a good sign.

            Fiona laid down and cast one nervous glance back at Joe and the rest of the band. Patrick did a poor impression of sleepwalking towards her, then took the saw from behind the table and raised it up.

            “This may hurt her a bit,” the ringmaster said to the audience. The edge of the blade was inches from her stomach when Joe stood up, lifted his gun up into the air, and fired it.

            There was a bursting sound of shattering glass, and then the tent went pitch black.

***

            Pete felt more than a little stupid for not picking up on all the signs of fae. When his mom told him what he was, he had done so much research on magical creatures that he turned into a walking encyclopedia. He should have remembered everything. The dryad at the ticket booth who had stayed in her oak tree even as it was whittled down into a box. The mirrors that changed like they had been glamoured. The carousel that- well, he still hadn’t figured out what was wrong with the carousel, but he had read Something Wicked This Way Comes, and he wasn’t keen to find out what it did.

            It took a freaking salamander for him to realize what was wrong. And a part of him was still kicking himself for being so slow even as the lights blew out and it was his turn to take over.

            “Stay in your seats,” he said to the crowd of kids around them. He didn’t bother with raising his voice as he spoke and a golden glow washed over the terrified faces in the room. With so many people, his charmspeak couldn’t keep them seated for long, but more importantly, it provided enough light to see the stage before anyone got the lights back up. Patrick was holding the saw to the ringmaster’s neck and Fiona was holding his hands behind his back. Pete got up as Joe and Andy ran forward and grabbed the ringmaster.

            “Under the stage,” Joe said to Pete. “It’s a drop, but we’ll be at the bottom.”

            So Pete ran forward and jumped, feeling the sickening sensation in his stomach as he dropped too far too fast. Sure enough, someone caught him and set him back on his feet, which was a pretty unsettling experience in the intense darkness. Soon, however, Patrick pulled out his phone and the dim blue light of the screen faintly illuminated the room.

            “Shut the trap door?” Patrick said to him. Pete jumped up as high as he could, felt his hand catch on a piece of wood, and it slammed back down. A few moments after, Andy must have found a light switch by the dim light of the cell phone, because the whole room was illuminated.

            It was a scene straight out of a horror movie, Pete thought, but he didn’t panic or vomit or do anything embarrassing like that. He just surveyed the room. It was red and brown, mostly, except for some places higher up on the walls and some parts of the ceiling that were grey. Only the most recent dead girl’s body lay crumpled in the center of the room, but the whole empty cellar was painted in the blood of her and all the other children that had come before. The ringmaster himself stared up at Pete with dull eyes, his hands bound and the saw still at his throat.

            “Peter Wentz,” the man said. “The demon-spawn who likes to play human. I wondered when I would meet you.”

            “Wonder no longer,” Pete said. “I always love meeting fans.”

            The ringmaster sneered. He spat at Pete’s feet, the spit causing the scarlet on the floor to shine.

            “You waste an awful lot of blood for a redcap,” Pete said, glancing around.

            “There’s plenty more where it came from,” he said. “We live in a time of excess. There’s just too many humans in the world, don’t you think?”

            “Not the way you’re doing it,” Pete said. “Tell us where the queen is?”

            The ringmaster started cackling. He laughed too loud and too long, and when he finally stopped, he shook his head at Pete.

            “Stupid little demon spawn too,” he said. “The queen is at court, as she always is.”

            “Knew it,” Fiona said. She said it quietly, but it was still annoying.

            “So what is this operation?” Pete asked. “Just hunting for children to bring back home? You have hundreds out there, thousands!” Pete too was dangerously close to shouting, but the man just smiled and shrugged.

            “It’s in our nature,” he said. “The court grows, so do its subjects. So yes, I go out hunting and bring them back. Many of them will grow up much happier with us. Besides,” he glanced behind him, then back at Pete. “You seemed to have placed your claim on a human too.”

            Pete blanched.

            “Not like that I haven’t,” he said.

            “Really?” the ringmaster said. “His aura glows like the sun rose on you this morning. Nasty creature. I remember him from years ago. The human who couldn’t be charmspoken,” he said with disdain. “What are the odds that he of all people grew up to belong to the most pathetic fae-”

            “Right, so we’re not usually on the winning side this ahead of the game, but I’m pretty sure procedure requires me to explain what happens to you next,” Joe cut in. “You’re going to tell us how to shut this operation down and get the kids out, and we are mercifully going to let you live. Or we can kill you and avenge the deaths of all the children that you killed here, and then we’ll fight our way out.”

            Joe, Pete thought, had gotten a hell of a lot scarier in the time he had known him.

            “Intriguing offer,” the ringmaster said, “But I’ll have to pass.”

            Patrick was holding onto him tightly, Pete could see that, but the man suddenly shrank down, disappearing from Patrick’s hands as he shot down to a height of barely three feet tall. His grin was gnarled and bloody as he stared up at them. Then, the ringmaster moved too rapidly for Pete to see. Pete felt a sharp pain shoot up his leg, and then the thing was running.

            Pete gasped and grabbed at his leg, yanking out a very small dagger that was, predictably, also dripping blood. Joe and Andy were running, but Patrick stayed long enough to ask, “Are you good?” and when Pete nodded, he ran after them.

            A small hallway branched off from the room they had been in, made of the same flat gray material. The redcap could run quickly, but not forever, and it wasn’t long before Andy had him pinned, squirming, high up against a wall.

            “We are going to stop this place with your help or without it,” Andy said.

            “ ** _Let me go_** ,” he said, a sickly red flash of light washing over Andy. Andy dropped him, but by then Patrick had caught up with them and took over pinning the redcap to the wall.

            “Give it a rest,” Patrick said. “Really.”

            “And tell us how to get the kids out of here,” Joe said. The redcap smirked up at him.

            “The children followed the fae, and they may leave the same way,” he said. “The only way out is through a faery door, along with the fae themselves.”

            The little redcap’s eyes shifted around to each of them as he growled, feral. Then, he jerked his head forward and sank his teeth into Patrick’s arm. Patrick’s eyes widened, and he hissed in pain, but didn’t move. The redcap’s aura was bright with fear.

            “I will not betray my people,” he said defiantly.

            “Tell us who’s in charge, then,” Pete said. The creature snarled.

            “I am,” he said. “And I will not die at the hands of a traitor fae, one who won’t ally himself with his own kind.”

            “I would never ally myself with the likes of you,” Pete said. The monster laughed again.

            “Unseelie Court does not want you. We would never seek you out. You will come to us begging, with a reason for us to take you, or you will be our enemy.”

            “That could be why you don’t have many friends. Or allies,” Pete said.

            “I need no friends,” the redcap said. “Only blood. And the bones of our homes that we carry with us like gravedirt, to make home wherever we go.”

            Pete frowned at this, and while everyone was momentarily distracted (they shouldn’t have been, but the way fae talked, Pete couldn’t help but get thrown off) the redcap sank his teeth into Patrick’s hand again, this time hard enough for him to drop the saw.

            Pete saw what was going to happen before it did, saw the redcap grab the saw and lift it up to slash across Patrick, to get the blood on his hat he’d grown accustomed to getting once every hour. But before he could even begin to try and stop it, Patrick snatched the long saw from the fae and ended up dragging it through the redcap’s neck instead.

            The second before the redcap hit the floor, Pete was grabbing Patrick and pulling him backwards.

            “The hat, the hat,” Pete said frantically, “Don’t let it touch you.”

            “Why?” Patrick asked, horror clear on his expression.

            “Because redcaps aren’t all born fae. Sometimes humans who put on the hat of a dead redcap become like them,” Pete said. Joe and Fiona, both of whom had been inching closer, took a large step back.

            “Now what?” Joe asked. “That was one hundred percent bluff, just so everyone knows. I don’t care about killing him, but to the best of my knowledge we don’t have a backup plan. We could’ve figured out more if he hadn’t died.”

            “You’re right, sorry, next time I’ll just fucking die,” Patrick said blandly.

            “We have to get everyone out of here,” Andy said, “They were almost done travelling the country, so once everyone gets out they should be safe for now, right?”

            “There is no way out,” Fiona said. “We’re trapped here.”

            “No, we’re not,” Patrick said. “Ryan. If he hadn’t been able to leave he would have found us and told us.”

            “I don’t know what it does to adults, but we can’t get out,” Fiona said. “For kids, there’s no way out.”

            “Yes there is,” Pete said. “This isn’t court, and you heard him, he said children can leave through a faery door, with a faery. So we find a door, yeah?”

            “That feels like one of those easier said than done things,” Joe said. “What the fuck does a faery door look like?”

            “Guys?” Andy said. “There’s a salamander down here.”

            Pete turned behind him, horrified but deep down, somewhat resigned. Of course, there was a fucking salamander there. And he doubted if it had come through the room that had been painted with blood that it was an indigenous animal.

            “So, these fae salamanders,” Patrick said. “I know they look just like the real thing, but are there any differences?”

            Seemingly in answer to his question, the salamander exploded into a pillar of fire that stretched from the ceiling to the floor.

            “They're fire fae,” Pete said belatedly.

            In truth, Pete had never seen this type of salamander in real life. He hadn’t interacted with very many fae in real life, since his parents had done a damn good job of keeping him separated from that whole world. They didn’t want their son surrounded by any of the toxicity of fae culture, and he wanted no part of it, but he still did a lot of research on it. He had wanted to be aware of the kinds of things out there. There had never been much information listed on salamanders, other than that they were a type of fae, they had an affinity for fire, and looked like the regular type of salamander. Also, that they were connected to the Unseelie rather than the Seelie Court.

            None of those helpful New Age books with their glossy green and gold covers promising candle magic to improve your sex life had warned Pete of the veritable tornado of fire that was currently barrelling towards them.

            The only good thing that could be said of the spinning column of fire was that it wasn’t especially wide. Sure, it was about ten feet tall, but it was roughly the width of an adult human, which made the thing imposing, but entirely possible to avoid if you were nimble enough.

            “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Joe shouted, even as he jumped to the side, pulling Andy away from the pillar of fire with him.

            “I don’t suppose anyone saw a fire extinguisher down here?” Patrick asked. He flinched as the fire turned back around (did it turn? Or did it just change direction? There couldn’t have been an actual _front_ to this thing, right?) and started to pursue them again.

            “We can’t go back up through the stage,” Joe said. “So, okay, when you get past this again, start sprinting? Everyone good on that plan?”

            “I’m not much of a sprinter,” Fiona said, but then the fire was upon them, and everyone picked a side and jumped past it.

            The heat grazed Pete’s side, a furnace-like burn that hurt so badly he was sure he must have been badly wounded, but then Patrick was slamming into Pete’s side. It took Pete a few seconds to realize the ache had been from his clothes, which were burning until Patrick smacked the fire away. They must have caught fire as he ran past the salamander. Patrick paused long enough to give him an encouraging smile, and then the two of them were running again. In front of them, Pete saw that Andy had scooped Fiona up and was carrying her, bridal style. Fiona looked pissed, but she was clinging to Andy anyway. Given the swell of her stomach that Andy had to crane his neck to see over, Pete thought this was probably the best case scenario for her.

            They followed the hallway down to where it turned and kept going. All the bland gray walls seemed to blend together, and if they had been taking different branches and turns, Pete knew they would have been hopelessly lost. His side had started burning again, from exhaustion this time instead of fire, but then they came upon a flight of stairs that led up to a door in the ceiling.

            Joe went through first, slamming the door open to the brilliant night sky, the air full of the sweet smell of carnival food and trampled grass. Pete hadn’t even realized that his nostrils were full of smoke until they were out in the open air. He could breathe again, and took in deep lungfuls of the night air.

            Last up, Patrick kicked the heavy wooden door down after them. It laid against the ground, the kind of thing that would be easy to ignore if you didn’t know it was there, in spite of its massive size and weight. The five of them were all breathing hard, and Joe set Fiona gingerly to her feet. She yanked her shirt down over her stomach and glared at him.

            “I had it,” she said. Andy held his hands up.

            “All right, sorry,” he said. All of them stared down at the door.

            “It’s made of wood,” Pete said. It wasn’t the sort of thing that needed to be said, as everyone could see that the door was made of wood, but it felt like an important reminder. Any fire that hot and enormous should be able to burn right through it, but the seconds ticked on into minutes while they stared down at the door.

            “Oh!” Fiona said. “Of course, it can’t burn it down, it’s wood.”

            That sounded like an oxymoron to Pete. He raised his eyebrows at her, hoping for some clarification. Fiona rolled her eyes.

            “It’s wood. Everything in this place is made of wood. The fae probably have, like, a thing for it. Like with lots of nature. They can’t go around destroying it all crazy.”

            “Shit,” Pete said. “Fae usually live in forests and wild places. The redcap, he said they brought the bones of their homes with them like gravedirt.”

            Fiona was nodding, even though the rest of his band didn’t seem to follow.

            “In traditional vampire stories, not that Twilight crap, the vampires have to carry a sprinkle of dirt from their graves to travel to other places,” she said.

            “So the fae brought the wilderness with them in the form of the wood they used to make the carnival,” Pete breathed.

            “Fascinating,” Andy said, “But what does that mean?”

            “It means they’ll be scattered and stranded if we burn this place down,” Pete said. The band and Fiona looked around at each other.

            “It’s risky,” Patrick said. “There’s a lot of ways that these kids can get hurt from doing that. We’re not exactly fire experts.”

            “But it’s our best chance,” Pete said. “Besides, if the wood is that important to them, we can try and do damage control. Make sure only the wood burns.”

            “I feel like you have an inherent misunderstanding of how fire works,” Patrick said.

            “We’ll start wherever the lowest concentration of kids is,” Joe said. “Once this place starts burning the fae will start running for the exit, and we can split up. Most of us can lead the kids out, and someone will keep watch over the fire.”

            He looked at Pete like he wasn’t sure, and Pete nodded at him. Joe dug a flat silver lighter out of his pocket and flicked it open, a bright flame already dancing on top of it.

            “Don’t see many kids around here,” he said. “You guys ready?”

            Joe took a breath, bent down and held the flame against the wooden trap door. He stayed there for a minute, then swore and pull his hand back, shaking it. The wood didn’t even look charred.

            “Kindling,” Andy said. “Kindling would probably help you light a fire.”

            Joe glared at him while Fiona bent over with laughter.

            The five of them ended up propping the door open slightly with a rock they had pried out of the grass so that the flame could more easily start eating away at the corner of the door. They made a small pile of crumpled receipts and dry grass, and Joe set it ablaze. Pete thought for a second that it still wasn’t going to catch, but as the last of the receipt ashes blew past their ankles, he saw a small but steady flame growing on the edge of the door.

            “Don’t suppose you brought a bottle of whiskey with you this time?” Joe asked Patrick, and Patrick flipped him off. Fiona giggled again.

            “Man, no one is ever gonna believe that this happened to me,” she said.

            With the first fire burning, they walked to the back of a nearby tent. Peering under the curtain, they saw that the tent was empty but for a woman selling her wares, what it was couldn’t be seen. A long, spindly tail stuck out from under her skirt, swishing back and forth in the grass. Joe set fire to the corner of the curtain, and they moved silently on.

            They had set a third fire when Pete felt a jolt of panic in the base of his chest.

            “You do think we’re doing the right thing, don’t you?” he asked. “I mean, people could get hurt….”

            “We’re gonna get them out,” Andy said. “Everyone.” He was so sure and full of conviction that Pete believed him.

            It took a few more fires before the blazes started to get serious. The woman with the tail shrieked and ran from her tent, hair and clothes streaming behind her as she ran.

            “We should follow,” Joe said. “See where she’s going.”

            “You guys stay with the fire, keep making sure things are burning,” Pete said. He nodded at Andy, and the two of them followed her.

            They followed her through the technicolor mass of tents and stalls, all supported by wood, Pete noted, as she ran towards the big top tent. There was a slightly smaller tent attached to it, Pete realized, probably where all the performers where. That was where she was heading. Before she could reach the entrance Andy put on a burst of speed and tackled her to the ground, clapping his hand over her mouth as they both sat up. She looked between Andy and Pete in terror.

            “We’re not gonna kill you if you don’t give us a reason to, even after what you’ve done here,” Pete said. “Now,” he stepped closer to her, pulling out his whip from his jeans pocket, “Where’s the exit?”

            The fae wordlessly led the way to one of the dirt paths between two of the tents, a makeshift street that seemed to go on forever. She walked a little ways down it, then stopped under an arch covered in white lights. It had looked merely decorative, but on closer inspection each of the tiny white bulbs was a small, button mushroom.

            “It won’t work without one of us,” she said, her voice deep and gravelly. “No child can leave except with the aid of a faery.”

            Pete met Andy’s eyes, the two of them both clearly holding back laughter.

            “You know, we’ve got that bit covered,” Pete said. His eyes flashed gold. “And one last thing. What’s up with the carousel?”

The fae gave him a strange look.

“The carousel is only just a carousel,” she said.

Andy let the woman go, and she walked under the archway, disappearing rather than coming out the other side.

            Pete glanced away, off to where he could see orange light glowing in the distance and smoke rising up into the sky. The crowd wasn’t panicked yet, but there were murmurs, and a few screams that sounded more afraid than enthusiastic coming from the direction of the fire.

            “Let’s see if we can figure out how this works, and fast,” Pete said. Andy nodded. He walked under the arch, braced for something to happen, but merely walked through it.

            “Big ideas?” Andy asked. Pete bit his lip, concentrating.

            “With a faery hand in hand,” he muttered. “Come back through.”

            When Andy was back on his side, Pete held out his hand.

            “Hold my hand and do not let go of it, and walk through, then come back,” Pete said. “I think this might work, but don’t let go, okay?”

            Andy nodded again, took Pete’s hand, and walked under the arch. He winked out of existence, or that was what it looked like, but Pete could still feel the pressure on his hand that looked like he was holding nothing but air. Andy came back through, looking shell shocked.

            “It just opens up to the parking lot,” he said. “Same place we came in.”

            “Perfect,” Pete said. He felt a little lightheaded, and he doubted if it had anything to do with the smoke. “You go find the others and tell them how to get here. Or, shit, how are you going to find your way back?”

            “I can’t leave you here!” Andy said. “The whole fucking carnival is gonna come through here! What are you-?”

            “It’ll almost definitely probably be fine,” Pete said. “Just, you know, hurry, and find a way to mark the trail. I’ll be here.”

            Andy frowned, then walked a few steps over, snapping off a piece of tentpole. He jammed it into the ground, then dragged it, leaving a deep line in the earth.

            “More efficient than breadcrumbs, right?” he said. Pete grinned at him.

            “Hurry back,” he said, and with that, Andy was gone.

            Pete kept his whip out. Contrary to what he said, he suspected that something about this would be dangerous, but he hoped that if he hung off to the side none of the escaping fae would pay him too much mind.

            It took another few minutes, but soon quite a few fae were running through the arch, some with strange markings on their faces and some with their eyes still glowing, but most only recognizable as fae because they were adults in a carnival filled with children. In the midst of this, a group of scared looking kids, about middle school aged, ran right up to Pete.

            “The other guys, the nice ones, they said you could help?” one of the boys said. Pete nodded, glanced over his shoulder, then back to the kids.

            “Hold my hand while you walk through and don’t let go till you’re outside the carnival, okay?” Pete said. The boys nodded, and one by one, Pete took their hands and had them walk through the archway, staying firmly inside the carnival himself. He wasn’t sure how well they would do outside, but he hoped that the fae would be too busy escaping to bother with the fleeing children. A second group of kids soon showed up, and he explained to them how to get out, too.

            He had just helped the last girl in the second group through when a very pretty woman with a bright red hat walked up to him rather than heading straight for the arch.

            “I heard you killed my brother,” she said. The hat, he realized in horror, was dripping wet, a trickle of red running down from it across her forehead and dripping into her eyes. It was sickening looking.

            “That was my boyfriend who did that, actually,” Pete said weakly.

            She flashed her teeth at him in something Pete would not have considered a smile, then lurched forward, knife first.

            Pete threw his hand out to stop her, still holding his whip in it. He hadn’t actually had much success fighting with it yet, but it struck across her face and sent her rearing back before she actually managed to draw blood from him.

            “You’re not getting away with this,” she said. Pete tightened his grip on the handle of his whip, sweat making it slippery in his hand.

            “You’re right, good guys never accomplish their dastardly schemes to save children from monsters,” he said. She reared back to strike again, like a snake, but before she did, someone snapped her neck from behind. She fell to the ground at Pete’s feet. Behind her, Joe nodded at Pete.

            “Andy and Patrick were worried about you, and I said, ‘No, Pete? He can take care of himself.’ So if you could nod while I tell them that you took care of this yourself, that’d be great.”

            Joe stood next to Pete while Pete continued to help kid after kid through the arch.

            “Where are they?” Pete asked eventually.

            “Getting kids out of here,” Joe said. “They’re checking every tent and lighting it up after they get the kids cleared out, helping them off rides and stuff. Seems like the fae aren’t too concerned with stopping the Ferris wheel when they’re running for their lives.”

            Pete nodded, and went back to helping the kids through.

            It felt like hours passed like this. Pete’s hands became sweaty from holding a thousand different nervous teenagers’ hands, which was a change from his usual experiences with nervous teens. They hadn’t seen fae in a while, and the fires were beginning to blaze uncomfortably close to them. Pete was starting to feel really, seriously worried about the others when Patrick and Fiona ran up to him.

            “We think that’s everyone,” Patrick said. “We checked every tent that we could and didn’t hear anybody screaming or anything from the ones we couldn’t get into, so we think that there was actually enough time to get everyone out of here.”  
            “And I think the spell-thing is broken,” Fiona said happily. There was a boy next to her, Pete realized, with the same sleepy-dazed expression on his face that he was beginning to recognize in the kids escaping. He looked about the same age as Fiona, and had her fingers loosely entwined with hers.

            “Fantastic,” Pete said. “Where’s Andy?”

            “Isn’t it obvious?” Patrick asked. He was smiling like was in on a joke. As if on cue, a few moments later Pete saw Andy walking down the road with a small stampede of animals behind him.

            “I am not entirely sure how to get an elephant through this archway,” Pete said. Patrick shrugged.

            “Maybe we can lift it,” he suggested, sounding more amused than concerned.

            “Not a bad idea,” Joe said. “It’s not the world’s tallest elephant.”

            Fiona and the boy got on either side of the arch and lifted it up over their heads, so that when the elephant reached them, Pete held his hand to the elephant’s leg and nudged it through.

            Logically, the elephant still shouldn’t have fit through, but it did, somehow, and Pete didn’t like to question magic when it worked in his favor. The lions were still docile enough that they were easier, and then there was nothing left but his band and the young couple.

            “This’ll hopefully send you back to Ohio,” Pete said, feeling a small twinge of sadness. He was going to miss Fiona, he thought, but she just smiled up at him.

            “It’s been real, Fall Out Boy,” she said. “I might even like you better than Good Charlotte after today.”

            “Couldn’t ask for a higher compliment,” Pete said with a small laugh. “Good luck, kid.”

            He led the two of them through together, then turned to his band.

            “We could probably just walk through together,” he said. They linked up arms and walked under the arch.

            For the second time that night, Pete was able to take a deep breath of cool night air that was sweet and clear, unaware of how much smoke had flavored the air he had been immersed in. He glanced around to be sure his band was with him, then saw that they were in a mostly empty parking lot. There were a couple of scattered groups of kids lingering in the parking lot, looking various degrees of confused, and a few lone cars, but nothing else. Turning around, Pete expected a massive fire, but instead just saw an empty lot where the fairgrounds had been.

            “Okay, so any explanation as to what the fuck happened there?” Joe asked. Pete shook his head and exhaled heavily.

            “Fuck if I know,” he said. “But I bet we just made some powerful enemies.”

            “So, an average Tuesday for us,” Patrick said. “Come on. We saved the day, the sun hasn’t even risen yet. We’ve got one more show, and then a couple months of rest before the label will really get on us about the next album. Let’s call it a win for now.”

            “Fine by me,” Joe said. “I call not-it for driving.”

            Pete groaned, but he felt warm all over in a way that had nothing to do with fire. Sometimes, he thought, everything just worked itself out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooh man I know I'm posting this at a weird time but... I was excited. Sorry for yet another long chapter that took forever, I swear I'm working on this, but thanks for sticking around either way :3 it's gonna be a big summer for me- I'm getting married, I'm going to summer class still, working on a lot of independent projects, so thanks for bearing with me
> 
> Anyway, credit where credit is due I want to first thank my amazing beta - light of my life, reason there are so many less spelling errors, I owe you my life. Second, to everyone who sent in fanart for the last chapter I ADORE IT. Everyone should go to thehigh-waytohell.tumblr.com to check that out, because it's lovely, there's some very scary egrigor edits. And lastly, on the subject of egrigors, one of you last time suggested that they might be tulpas and you were 90% right! The original idea for the characters were tulpas, so I had to have Ryan bring it up. I did a lot more research on them and realized it didn't quite fit, but they remained pretty similar to their initial design, so they're almost tulpas! 
> 
> Ah, what else to say? Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! It was a lot of fun to write and I laid some important groundwork for later. The next chapter will be a little heavy, so here's your advance warning for that.
> 
> Also also, fun fact but Patrick really doesn't like roller coasters.
> 
> Chapter title by Creature Feature.


	3. Lights Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fall Out Boy flies out of town for a world-record-breaking trip down to Antarctica. When they stop in Chile, it feels almost like a vacation after the Infinity on High album cycle.   
>  But since when is Fall Out Boy allowed to slow down and relax? Especially when they’re being trailed by an enemy who knows their every weakness.
> 
> ƨɿoϱiɿϱǝ ǝʜɈ ǝɿɒwǝd
> 
> γmǝnǝ Ɉƨɿow nwo ɿυoγ ǝɿɒ υoγ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEFORE READING THIS I want to impress that while the warnings for this chapter are much the same as ever (blood, violence, fire, etc) this is a bit darker than most of what I’ve written before. I may be over-cautious here, but if you have any sensitivities, tread with caution. I want THWTH to be a fun experience for anyone who wants to read it, so message me here or on tumblr at thehigh-waytohell.tumblr.com if this sounds like something you might not be up for, and I can give you a full list of warnings with spoilers, summarize the events of the chapter for you, whatever you want.   
> I say this mostly because some of you in the comments expressed a degree of empathy to the point of distress where it came to Patrick and issues of self-esteem. So if you think you’ll have any problems with any of the warnings, (specifically related to Patrick) then let me know. 
> 
> Warnings for: blood, burns, violence, fire, psychological torture, elements of non-con

            Santiago was gorgeous in a way Pete had never seen before, even though he didn’t get to see very much of it. He was completely wiped from the flight down to Chile, but that didn’t make the view from the tinted car window any less incredible.

            “You can see the mountains from here,” he said quietly. No one seemed to hear him. He couldn’t blame them. It was an exhausting flight, they were jet lagged, and they had a long week in front of them. It was just them, their manager, their techs, an executive from the Guinness Book of World Records, and an MTV reporter for the next week. They had one day in Santiago for a show and then another flight down to the southernmost tip of Chile. After that was a connecting flight to Antarctica to break another world record, which was getting to be a pretty fun hobby for the band.

            While Pete stared at the mountains (real, proper mountains with snow on the peaks!) he hoped that the location of their hotel hadn’t been leaked. The goal for tomorrow was, unlikely as it sounded, to actually go out and have normal fun that was completely unrelated to the supernatural. Pete had never been to Chile, and while he had already been disappointingly told that there would not be enough time to visit Easter Island or any of the country’s natural wonders, he was hoping he could at least check out the city.

            “Babe,” Pete nudged Patrick, and Patrick wrinkled up his nose and waved Pete’s hand away. Pete shook Patrick awake a little more insistently, and Patrick blinked at him.

            “You’ve got to check out the mountains,” Pete said. Patrick looked deeply annoyed, but he still sat up and leaned over Pete, his eyes popping a little when he saw the mountains and the city rushing by. It was breathtaking.

            Behind Patrick, Pete could see the MTV reporter raise his eyebrows. Pete liked James, the guy they invited along with, but in a conditional sort of way. He wasn’t fond of any paparazzi for obvious reasons, but James Montgomery didn’t seem to qualify. He was relaxed around Fall Out Boy, which, in reporters, usually meant a lack of interest in the music, but Pete didn’t mind. To him, it meant they could be sort of friends even in spite of Pete’s intense distaste for reporters.

            Even more than he liked him, Pete respected him. James had previously covered a Fall Out Boy event where there had been a minor banshee incident and had seen the whole thing. When the article about the event came out, Pete wasn't surprised to see no mention of the banshee, but he was surprised to see that James had written a good article. It was funny, evocative, had quotes from every band member that displayed each of them at their finest and most lovable, and every word of it was a lie. Pete couldn't lie, but he had a deep admiration and sense of wonder towards those who were as skilled in the art of deception as James was.

            It made him both admirable and dangerous, both good reasons for Pete to invite him along on their big Antarctic voyage. He assumed the implicit message was clear: _I'll pay to take you on an amazing journey where you can get great Fall Out Boy material to write with if you write what you should_. None of this was said out loud, but James was smart enough to get it. Pete could see in both his aura and his eyes as he turned away from Pete and Patrick's kiss that he understood there were some things that were off limits.

            Really, the whole trip could have almost been vacation, in Pete's eyes. Minimal staff and security, only two shows and one of them barely counted, and he got to explore a scenic location with Patrick. It was hard to believe he was getting paid for all of this. Often it was hard for Pete to believe what his life had become.

            It was late, and the streets were empty when their long town car pulled up in front of the hotel. Their hotel was in a more business-y district of the city whose only sign of life was a small cluster of girls camped outside of the doors to a concert hall across the street from the hotel. Pete saw them as he got out of the car and ducked his head down. They didn’t seem to be watching the hotel, but Pete felt way too conspicuous to be standing right across the street from a throng of fans dedicated enough to camp outside the venue twenty-four hours before the show started.

            “We should talk to them,” Patrick said, gesturing over his shoulder at the girls. “They’re gonna be out for ages, and there’s not that many of them.”

            Pete glanced at the tiny line. There couldn’t have been more than ten, he thought, so he glanced at Joe and Andy and shrugged. Together, to their security guard’s dismay, they ran across the street to the fans.

            Pete half-heartedly put a finger to his lips so that they didn’t all scream, but it didn’t do him any good. He could hardly hear himself cracking bad jokes and saying hello to each girl over their squeals of delight. The conversation didn’t consist of much more than “hellos” due to the band’s exhaustion and the language barrier, but the fans’ auras glowed brilliantly.

            “Pete! A gift for you!” Pete stopped and took a handmade card from someone and grinned at them.

            “Joe, you dropped something!”

            “Pete!”

            “I love you!”

            Soon, the four of them started walking away. Pete saw Joe slipping what looked like a piece of jewelry into his pocket with an amused look on his face. The security guard who had accompanied them - not Marcus or Charlie, in fact, no one Pete could recall the name of, which was odd - ushered the band across the street and into the hotel, much to the girls’ dismay. They were shuffled through the lobby, all their bags piled onto a brass luggage cart, and their manager (who was not KTC because KTC was their touring manager and this wasn’t _technically_ a tour) checked them in.

            Finally, when they reached the brightness of their room, the four of them snapped back to life.

            “Alright, this place have a WiFi connection?” Joe asked. He threw himself onto the couch and pulled out his phone.

            “We'll probably have to call the desk for the password,” Patrick said. “No calls from KTC since we got on the plane, so looks like we’re on our own.”

            “Unless he sends us any new information, I vote we go hunting-slash-sightseeing tomorrow,” Pete said, while he checked his own phone. Just a text from Ashlee, asking to call soon. “Might as well have some fun in Chile.”

            “Assuming we can make it past the barricade of fans,” Joe said. Pete grimaced. He didn't want to think about how long the line would be the next morning. He'd rather face a dozen ravenous vampires than a mob. Seeing a dozen girls light up upon seeing him was one thing, but hundreds were a lot harder to deal with.

            “It’s hard to believe we’re free from monster fighting for the week,” Pete said. “We should celebrate. Go get drunk on… what’s the alcohol of choice here?”

            “Pretty sure we still have other obligations,” Joe said. “Interviews, promo stuff, getting ready for Antarctica. I for one am terrified to hear what the penguin critics have to say about us.”

            “Were playing for scientists,” Patrick said. “So, you know, much tougher crowd. Hopefully someone on the continent likes pop punk music.”

            “Let’s worry about critics later,” Pete said. His voice was wandering dangerously close to whiny, but he had been spoiled by plenty of full nights of sleep with Patrick, and he was tired to the point of irritation. Or crankiness, as his boyfriend would call it. “How about we start with ordering room service and going to bed?”

            “Grandpa,” Patrick said, leaning into Pete’s side. “Think there’s anything vegan on this menu?”

            “I’m sure there’s a wilted salad somewhere,” Andy sighed. Pete flicked through the menu briefly, feeling extraordinarily content. It was nice, getting to hang out with the others, not in the midst of a tour but for something that didn’t really feel like work at all. They were going to break a world record, playing a show in all seven continents in just a few months, and it was kind of exhilarating. An entirely human goal, but how many humans got a chance to go to Antarctica, anyway?

            “There’s actually a veggie burger on here,” Patrick said. “So, onions on mine. You’re ordering, right babe?”

            Pete rolled his eyes, ordered food for everyone, and manipulated the waiter’s aura a little when he dropped off the food. He didn’t seem eager to be delivering food at midnight. As he left the cart in the room, he muttered that they could have picked it up when they were still downstairs, but he left smiling thanks to Pete. He wasn’t sure if that had more to do with the manipulation of his aura, or the fifty dollar tip, but either way, it was a good deed done.

            Patrick made a face when he bit into his burger but chewed and swallowed anyway. Pete picked at his food, much to Patrick’s annoyance.

            “How long do we have tomorrow?” Joe asked through a thick mouthful of food.

            “If we soundcheck really late, we can get away with being out till, like five Chilean time,” Pete said. “How awesome is that?”

            “What time zone are we in, anyway?” Patrick asked. He was eating slower now and had started leaning against Pete’s arm. “I feel jet-lagged.”

            “Eastern Time,” Andy said.

            “Bullshit,” Pete said. “We’re on, like, the West Coast.”

            “Of South America,” Andy said. “It’s closer to the East Coast of North America, in terms of longitude. Have you ever seen a globe?”

            “Totally and completely fucked,” Pete declared. “Right, I’m going to bed. Patrick?”

            “I’ll come with,” Patrick said, leaving the last quarter of his burger on the plate. “Night.”

            “Sleep tight,” Joe leered at the two of them, and Pete, already walking into the first bedroom of the suite, flipped Joe off without turning around.

            Pete, for his part, slept soundly for hours, an unusual thing even post-Patrick. He only woke up before dawn because a knee was driven directly into his stomach. Pete flailed forward with a shout before he could even put the situation together. He blinked sleep out of his eyes just in time to see Patrick stumble into the attached bathroom and was just awake enough to hear the sounds of loud retching.

            Pete got up slowly, stretching out and groaning as he stood. He stole one glance out of the window at the still-gray light of the pre-dawn morning, only briefly lamenting the lack of more sleep, and then he padded into the bathroom after Patrick.

            Patrick clung to the toilet, his head hung down past the rim as he continued to vomit. Pete hovered in the doorway, uncertain if he should rub Patrick’s back or make a joke about it. Usually Patrick didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him or treating him gently unless he was pretty bad off, so Pete erred on the side he could apologize for more easily later.

            “If you’re pregnant like Joe was, I want a DNA test to see if I’m the father,” Pete said. “Because I never top.”

            Patrick slowly turned his head to look up at Pete, a thread of bile hanging down from the corner of his mouth and purple circles under his eyes.

            “Fuck you,” he croaked. But his aura looked amused and a little fond, so Pete wasn’t worried - not about making him upset, at any rate. He was significantly worried for Patrick’s health as he curled tighter to the toilet and vomited more into it, and Pete knelt down next to him, hand on his back anyway.

            “Hey, baby, what’s wrong?” Pete asked. Patrick groaned, the sound echoing against the walls.

            “I’m sick,” Patrick said. Pete glanced around the bathroom, all generic white and cream, almost as if he were rolling his eyes.

            “No shit,” Pete said. “But, like…?”

            “Food poisoning?” Patrick guessed. “Flu? I don’t know. I felt bad when we went to bed, and I didn’t sleep, but I’m fucking exhausted, and… and really fucking nauseous. It feels like a flu, but the burger I had tasted fucking weird.”

            “You didn’t sleep at all?” Pete asked. “Jeez. You want me to stay in with you today?”

            Patrick shook his head quickly.

            “No, no, go out, I’ll be fine,” he said. He shuddered, as though he were going to vomit again, but swallowed thickly. “I’ll stay in the hotel and see if I can get, like, manageable by tonight’s show.”

            “Baby,” Pete said, sympathetically. He kept one hand on Patrick’s back and sat with him as the sky outside got paler with the rising sun. When they heard the others getting up and making noise in the main room, Pete kissed Patrick on his clammy forehead and headed out.

            “Patrick’s sick,” he announced. Joe rolled his eyes and groaned, and Andy looked vaguely concerned.

            “Are we still going out?” he asked.

            “Yeah, he’s just gonna chill in the hotel today,” Pete said. “Nearly ready?”

            “Entirely ready,” Joe said. “Get dressed.”

            Pete shut the door quietly and poured Patrick a glass of water from the minifridge. He set it next to Patrick on the floor and got a weak smile in return.

            “You sure we shouldn’t just cancel tonight?” Pete asked. Patrick shook his head, already pulling himself up straighter.

            “As long as I’m not puking onstage,” he said. “We haven’t been here in ages. I might sound like hell if my throat gets torn up, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

            “You’re sweet,” Pete said. He kissed the top of Patrick’s head again, and said “Get some rest, okay?”

            Patrick made a half-formed noise of assent, and Pete shut both the bathroom and bedroom doors on his way out.

            The three of them caught up with the rest of their abnormally small party on the way out of the hotel. Diaz and the other techs made some noises about needing to be around “when the guys were inevitably late to soundcheck” but Pete dragged them out anyway. He felt a little bad for leaving Patrick behind, but excitement soon took over.

            They all piled into a car with a local who promised to take them to the best shopping district in town. Squashed together in the backseat, Pete saw Joe take a smooth black stone out of his pocket, turning it around and around in his fingers.

            “What’s that?” Pete asked. Outside, bright colors were streaming past them through the window, the sky so brilliantly blue it didn’t look real.

            “Girl gave it to me,” Joe said. “In the line last night. It’s jet, I think, like the weird Dandies stuff.”

            “Weird,” Pete said. He took the stone, lightweight just like the jet he remembered. “Sweet, though.”

            “It’s no teddy bear in a Clandestine t-shirt, but…” Joe trailed off with a snort. He pocketed the stone again and leaned back in his seat, looking relaxed.

            The driver let them off at the edge of what he referred to as the “artisan village,” a street full of expensive, open air stores selling handcrafted items. It looked like a lot of it was designed with American tourists in mind, but it was out in the brilliant, clear sunlight, and the streets were vibrant with color, so Pete didn’t really mind being pandered to.

            They were only in the first store, a small business that sold a great deal of clothing made out of soft, finely woven fabric, when Pete’s phone started ringing. The letters on the screen read KTC, and Pete groaned so loudly that everyone in the vicinity stared at him.

            Joe raised an eyebrow at him, but Pete just stepped over into a corner to answer the phone.

            “Please tell me you called me on accident,” Pete said.

            “No such luck,” Korean Tom Cruise said. “You heard about any monster activity in Santiago?”

            “No, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I hadn’t,” Pete said. “I feel like you’re about to tell me about some, though.”

            “Yeah, it might not be supernatural, but it’s pretty weird,” KTC said. “There’ve been a series of fires around the edge of the city, all of them in abandoned buildings, like whoever’s setting them is trying not to hurt any people.”

            “Is that all you have?” Pete asked, unable to hold back the annoyance in his tone. Mysterious fires might be dangerous, but they weren’t inherently supernatural. This didn’t feel like an awful lot to get worked up over.

            “Well, yes,” KTC sounded a little irritated himself. “But you told me to call you about any mysterious fires.”

            “I did?” Pete said. It sounded like something he’d say, but he didn’t remember it. “Okay, whatever, where’s the last one you’ve heard of? We’ll check it out, just in case it’s not human.”

            He got the address and broke the bad news to Andy and Joe. Together with Diaz, they pleaded for a little more time, and Pete gave in easily. There was no need to rush, he figured, if these fires were only happening in empty buildings. It sounded like it might end up being more of an issue for the local police than for them.

            Three local stores later, Pete was starting to feel guilty. It could be important, he supposed, and he told the others as much.

            “We’re on vacation,” Joe complained. “A work vacation, but a vacation nonetheless! Can’t we go to a foreign country without getting kidnapped by mermaids or faeries or… what would kidnap us in Chile?”

            “Some blood drinking nonsense, I’m sure of it,” Pete said. “Still. Could be important.”

            “This one of your magic police things, right?” Diaz said.

            “Something like that,” Pete said. “How should we explain it to James?”

            “Don’t worry too much, Jimmy, we’re just checking out this abandoned, on fire warehouse,” Andy said blandly. Pete cackled. They meandered back to the car and gave the driver the address KTC gave them.

            They were in the car for a long time as they drove through the city. It was pretty seeing it, but, Pete thought bitterly, it would be nicer to walk around it and explore. It took nearly an hour to get to the other side of the city, by which point everyone was feeling testy.

            The stone skeleton of the warehouse was still smoldering when they got there, but the place was clear of flames. Plumes of smoke continued to billow up into the sky, and the place smelled like burnt plastic. There didn’t appear to be any sort of firetrucks in front of the place, or any people at all, so there was no need to worry about attracting unnecessary attention.

            “What did you say was here again?” James said.

            “Official Fall Out Boy business,” Joe said. “Okay, so I suggest we go in, scout the place, and if we don’t see anything overtly, like, evil, or whatever, we split. I’m bored already.”

            “Deal,” Pete said. “You guys can stay in the car.”

            Pete brought his phone with him to take pictures for Patrick, and Joe had his pistol, but otherwise the three of them had nothing else on them as they walked in.

            There was no door, and subsequently no lock to worry about, but it was hard to breathe once they were inside the building. Pete tugged the collar of his shirt up over his nose to filter the air, and he started looking around for anything strange.

            All Pete could see were smoke stains and acrid black wisps of smoke wherever he looked. He wandered the building slowly, but there was nothing immediately obvious about the place. He didn’t even know what it had once been. A combination of the screen of smoke over everything and the lack of anything besides the foundations and walls of the building made it hard to tell anything about the place.

            Still, he walked around in silence, reaching out to touch the scorched walls from time to time. One of them was still hot, and he yanked his hand back at once. He didn’t like the aura inside the building, the empty feeling it gave him. The whole place was too quiet, and it made him uneasy.

            He, Andy, and Joe had split up at the entrance, so he didn’t know where the two of them were when he came across a staircase. It didn’t look like the stairs led up to anything, since Pete could see the sunlight streaming through the smoke at the top. The stairs were made of the same stone as the rest of the building’s frame, so he figured they ought to be sturdy enough.

            Pete walked to the top of the stairs quickly, breathing much easier when he was at the top. This was either an open-air roof, or a second floor whose walls and ceiling had completely burned away in the fire. Pete could see and breathe again, so he tugged his shirt back down and walked around. He was careful to avoid the edges and he watched his feet for any weak spots on the ground. He only made it a few paces forward before he saw bright red in front of him, stark against the flat gray of the burnt floor. Pete drew back, noticed more red on the roof, and refocused to look at the whole picture.

            Painted on the ground in bright red were the words: “ARE YOU MISSING SOMETHING?”

            Pete looked at it for a second, then knelt down and touched it. It was still wet, cold, but didn’t feel quite as thin as most wet paint Pete had felt in his life. But still, it couldn’t be…

            Pete lifted his shirt up over his mouth and ran back downstairs, diving back into the smoke.

            “ANDY!” he shouted. “Andy, where are you?”

            Andy and Joe both seemed to appear out of the smoke, looking concerned. They also had pulled their shirts over their faces.

            “I found something upstairs,” Pete said, his voice muffled by the fabric. “Can you come and-?”

            “Show us,” Joe said, frowning.

            Pete led them up the stairs and pointed at the message.

            “What the fuck is that thing?” he asked. He just pulled his shirt off this time, because he was too hot to focus. “I mean, it’s obviously weird, some kind of threat, but it’s written in English? English isn’t the national language here, is it?”

            “You think it was left for us?” Joe asked. Behind them both, Andy gave a strangled gasp. Pete spun around and saw Andy’s aura flaring suddenly with fear. He moved to tug Andy farther from the edge, but Andy shook his head. His shirt had slid back down around his neck, but his hand was covering his mouth.

            “It’s for us,” he said. “It is abso-fucking-lutely for us. That’s Patrick’s blood.”

***

            Pete and Joe didn’t seem to immediately grasp the gravity of the situation. Andy hadn’t been able to smell inside the building, but up on the roof, with the wind - creepy or not, Andy would recognize the scent of Patrick’s blood anywhere. It wasn’t the kind of smell a vampire just forgot. And the wind was blowing it, cold, but still fragrant, directly into Andy’s face.

            “Can’t be,” Joe said. “There’s no way.”

            Andy stared at him.

            “I know what his blood smells like,” he said.

            “Creepy, but not possible,” Joe said. “That’s too red to be old blood, and it’s a lot of blood, and I would know if something had happened to make him bleed that much.” He pointed to his skull. “Pack bullshit, remember? Patrick is fine. He’s not bleeding out.”

            Pete was looking back and forth between the two of them, like he was watching a tennis match, but much more anxious.

            “Are you sure it’s Patrick?” he asked Andy.

            “Yes, I’m fucking sure!” Andy said. “Nobody else smells like that!”

            “Maybe someone does and we just haven’t met them yet,” Joe argued. “We have no way of knowing for sure.”

            “Oh, so you admit you don’t know either?” Andy asked. He hadn’t felt this combative with Joe in a long time, but this… Andy was positive it was Patrick’s blood. Joe, for his part, looked affronted.

            “You know I would know,” he said. “I think I’m a bit more reliable than…”

            “Than what?” Andy asked.

            “Baby?” Pete said. Andy and Joe turned around to see Pete, who was standing a few feet from them, phone held against one ear and free hand cupped to the other.

            “Are you okay?” Pete asked. “Other than… you’re sure? Nothing’s wrong? Okay, just… call if anything’s up? Things are weird out here.”

            “Patrick’s fine,” Pete announced as he turned back to them. “But this is… definitely weird. You don’t think it’s one of his relatives or something?”

            “Jesus, I hope not,” Joe said. “But whoever it is-”

            “Lost a lot of blood,” Andy finished quietly. He could practically feel the accusations radiating off of the two of them, but he was so sure. He still thought it might be…

            “They’re probably still alive if this is still wet,” Joe said. “Whoever did this was just here, and their victim is still alive. Can you track them?”

            “Not through all this smoke,” Andy said. “I couldn’t smell anything when we were outside.”

            “Damn,” Joe said. “Okay, shit. Should we check out some of the other fires?”

            “I’ll call and get the addresses,” Pete said. Joe gave Andy another displeased glare, and then started downstairs.

            By the time they were out at the car, Pete had a new address to give the driver, and he couldn’t stay still. He fidgeted in the car, chewed on his lip, and generally looked more nervous than usual.

            “He’s fine,” Joe said. “You were just on the phone with him, right?”

            “Yeah,” Pete said. He didn’t stop bouncing his leg. “Yeah, but who’s blood was it?”

            “A coincidence. A relative.”

            “Oh, great, so the villain of the week murdered my boyfriend’s mom?!”

            “What?” James said. Pete looked up, startled.

            “What?!” he said. “Who said anything? We’re just gonna check out another fire?”

            “For... For official band business?” James said.

            “Yeah,” Pete said. He looked at the floor. “Something like that.”

            Pete’s fingers were turning brown where he must have touched the blood. It wasn’t that much, Andy thought. Not as much as Joe thought. Someone could paint that much with just a couple of cups of blood. But you would definitely notice if someone took a couple of cups of blood from you. He tried to take comfort in that.

            The next fire site wasn’t far, less than a fifteen minute drive. As soon as the three were out of the car, they were talking quickly and quietly in hushed tones.

            “What do you think the message means?” Joe said. It’s probably still meant for us, if they knew you would recognize it. ‘Are you missing something,’ what could that mean?”

            “Patrick didn’t come with us,” Andy said.

            “Knock it off,” Joe said. Andy drew back at the tone, almost angry. “What. Else?”

            “I don’t have any jewelry I wear regularly, much less any that’s gone,” Pete said. He laughed thinly.

            This building had been put out earlier than the other, and the smoke was thinner. It still didn’t smell pleasant, but Andy could at least breathe without coughing. He moved to start walking away, but Joe caught him by the shirt.

            “Let’s not split up,” Joe said in a low tone. “Just in case.”

            It wasn’t exactly a world class apology, but Andy would take it.

            They explored the lower level with no signs of blood. The building had three floors, so they walked quickly through all three. Andy breathed deeply as he could, but he didn’t smell anything at all like Patrick’s blood. Pete kept shooting him nervous glances, but Andy shook his head.

            “Well there has to be something here,” Joe said eventually. “They left us a message at the last fire. Did they know that we would go to that specific fire site? They can’t have.”

            “No blood here,” Andy said, but privately, he agreed. Something had to be there.

            “It smells more burnt down there?” Pete suggested, pointing back down a hallway they had already explored. Pete definitely had the worst sense of smell out of the three of them, but anything was worth checking out. They walked back down the hallway, and Andy paused next to where the acrid smell was the most intense.

            He looked closer at the wall, and saw, burnt into it, the words “NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES. SOME DONT EVEN SAVE THE DAY.”

            “Wonder who that’s for?” Joe said.

            “Who are we supposed to be saving?” Pete asked. He directed his question at the wall itself, as though that were going to answer. Of course, nothing new appeared to them; no greater understanding, and no explanation of the phrase.

            “Whoever’s blood was all over the last place,” Joe said. “But I don’t think they’d be at one of the fire locations; that’s too obvious.”

            “Should we check out the next one?” Pete asked.

            “What, the one before this?” Joe asked.

            “After,” said Pete. He waved his phone in the air. “They just put out another fire. It’ll be smokey-”

            “But fresh,” Andy said. “Let’s go.”

            The rest of their group was getting fairly fed up with what appeared to just be the band checking out burned buildings, but for as tense as the backseat was, no one complained. The nervous energy pulsating off of Pete must have been enough to keep them silent when it came to their opinions on the change of plans in the day’s activities.

            The next building they got to didn’t look much worse than the first. The smoke was a little thicker, a little blacker, but the building had finished burning and Andy ran straight in. He didn’t bother covering his mouth, trying to smell whatever might have been wrong here.

            He didn’t need to strain himself to find it. Even through the stench of smoke it was easy to smell the fresh blood, coppery and thick and eerily identical to Patrick’s. Andy raced through open arches and past damp walls until he came to a back room. The room was thick with smoke, but Andy could just make out the writing on the wall, in blood again this time.

            “YOU ARE YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY”

            “‘You are your own worst enemy,’” Joe read aloud. “Is that a lyric or something?”

            Andy had privately thought the same thing, but then a thought raced through him. Despite the building’s heat, he froze.

            “No,” he said. “Like evil twins. Like egrigors.”

            Pete, face half-buried in his shirt, lashed out, grabbing Andy by the arm.

            “They can imitate voices,” he said. “Any of our voices.”

            The room was dead silent for a moment, and then they were interrupted by the shrill sound of Pete’s phone ringing. He yanked it out of his pocket, and Andy was able to see Patrick’s name before Pete answered it.

            “Hello?” Pete said.

            “ _That took you a while_ ,” Patrick said. The volume was up on Pete’s phone, and Andy could hear him easily, barely distorted by the building they were in. “ _Really, we thought you were going to be faster with this._ ”

            “You didn’t leave especially thorough clues,” Pete said. His hands were shaking slightly, but he looked otherwise composed. “Where is he?”

            “ _C’mon,_ ” Not-Patrick’s voice was wheedling and light with amusement. “ _We’re having fun, aren’t we? I am. What good is the climax without a little foreplay first?_ ”

            “We’re not playing anything,” Pete said. “Where is he?”

            “ _Patience, Petey_ ,” Not-Patrick said. “ _Did Andy like the notes? I was kind of hoping he’d lick the blood to check._ ”

            Andy felt ill as he listened to the phone conversation, transfixed.

            “Where the _fuck_ is he?” Pete growled. His voice slipped into something almost like charmspeak as he cursed, free hand shaking significantly.

            “ _That’s not how we play the game_ ,” he said, almost sing-song. “ _It’s no fun if we tell you everything. We just wanted to call and let you know that you’re running a bit behind. Oh! And your boyfriend wanted me to tell you that he really, really misses you. Do you wanna talk to him?_ ”

            Pete’s breath hitched, but he didn’t answer. Andy leaned forward. It was harder to hear the details, but he was sure he heard cloth tearing, then heavy, familiar breathing, a very softly muttered “or else.”

            Then there was a buzzing noise, and a very familiar scream.

            Andy lurched forward but Pete pulled away from him and Joe, clutching the phone with both hands.

            “PATRICK!”

            “ _It’s nothing it’s fine it’s-_ ” he screamed.

            “Where are you? What’s happening? Where did you end up? We’re on our way, everything’s gonna be fine I swear it’s going to be-!”

            “ _Pete,_ ” Patrick cut him off in the middle of his rambling, not shouting but still intense. “ _I- venue, we’re at the venue somewhere backstage, I don’t-_ ”

            He was cut off again by the loud sound of buzzing and his own screams, and then the sound disappeared entirely.

            “ _Apparently we’ll be seeing you_ ,” Joe’s voice came through the phone. Then there was a click, and then there was nothing.

            Joe grabbed both of them by the arms and started walking. He dragged the two of them out of the building and into the car, quick and wordless.

            “Back to the hotel about five miles per hour faster than you think you can get away with,” Joe said into the front seat. He was almost growling, and after one look at his face, the driver sped away from the curb. Joe then leaned forward, his face frozen with intensity.

            “What’s going on?” Diaz asked. “Pete, shit, are you-?”

            “It’s an emergency,” Andy said. He glanced at Pete. He wasn’t making any noise, not moving at all, but Andy knew Pete. He put a hand on Pete’s knee and squeezed just a little too hard, just to reassure Pete that he was there. “And a long story.”

            “You three look bad,” Diaz said.

            “Like I said,” Andy said. “Emergency.”

            They had driven so far out, he realized as the city skyline grew bigger at an achingly slow rate. They had been drawn away from the venue to buy time, to make it take that much longer to get back. Everything was adding up.

            “It might not be what we think,” Joe said after a few minutes. “They might not have him.”

            “Are you fucking kidding me?” Andy shouted. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” Everyone else in the car drew back, unused to Andy shouting. He was uncharacteristically loud now: screaming in the small space. “I smelled his blood, you HEARD them on the phone, they took him and he’s probably being tortured, so please spare us your bullshit just because your powers aren’t working right.”

            Joe looked more cowed than angry at Andy’s outburst. Most of the occupants of the car were leaning away from Andy. Pete had flinched at the word “torture.” And all of them were a wreck. Andy was supposed to be calm, he knew, he ought to be holding them together, but things had escalated past that.

            “Um,” Diaz cleared his throat. “Sorry, did Patrick get kidnapped? Did you guys get a ransom call?”

            Andy really wished it had been a ransom call.

            “No, it’s not like- will you listen to me?” Joe said. Andy met his gaze but said nothing in response. Joe let out a huff.

            “Obviously the egrigors are involved,” he said. “But there were two phone calls, and they had to have faked one of them. What if the second call was the one they faked? What if that- that thing just pretended to be in pain?”

            “When you say ‘torture,’” Diaz began, but Joe kept talking over him.

            “They could be faking us out, trying to get us freaked and lure the three of us into a trap!”

            “That was Patrick’s blood!”

            “It could be the egrigor’s blood for all we know!”

            “No it couldn’t!” Andy cried. “He said himself that his blood doesn’t smell like that; Patrick wouldn’t want it to.”

            “But I’m saying they could have faked it!”

            “Based off of the fact that you can’t feel him, right?” Andy asked. Joe nodded. Andy was fully prepared to start arguing again, but this time Pete spoke up.

            “What about us?” he asked. “Can you feel Andy and me?”

            Andy was a little confused, but Joe looked frozen. He shook his head.

            “I’m feeling pretty fucking anxious right now,” Pete said, his voice barely a whisper. Pete glanced between the two of them and realized what Pete meant: that if he was distressed (and you could tell by looking at him that Pete was barely holding himself together) Joe should be able to feel that as well. Joe looked distraught but remained unmoving.

            “I don’t understand,” he said.

            “I feel like you understand more than me,” James said. Joe was shaking his head.

            “But this doesn’t shut off, it doesn’t go away sometimes. I can feel you guys. You’re in my pack. That’s how this works!”

            “Some things can weaken bonds,” Pete said. He sounded flat, like he was reading from a textbook. “Spells, powerful magic can break or dampen pack bonds. It’d need a physical attachment to you, but they’re clearly a few steps ahead, so it could be fucking anything-”

            “The stone,” Andy said. “You said the girl gave it to you as a gift, but that wasn’t what she said to you last night. She said, ‘You dropped something.’”

            Joe pulled the black stone out of his pocket and held it in his palm. He and Andy both stared at it. The girl could easily have seen someone who looked like Joe drop the thing. The egrigors could be identical to them, and it would be so easy to trick a fan. So easy to trick the four of them.

            Before Andy could suggest anything, come up with any plan for how to disarm the thing, Pete snatched the rock off of Joe’s hand. He threw it to the floor of the car and crushed it under his foot.

            For a split second, it was like everything was frozen. Even the driver had turned to give them a look, blank but questioning.

            Then Joe screamed.

            It was a strangled scream, like he was trying not to make noise even as he did. After a second, he covered his mouth with his hands, apparently unable to stop himself from crying out. He doubled over like he’d been shot, then pulled his hands away from his mouth only to clench them around the edge of the backseat. He breathed heavily, the noise coming from his throat almost a whimper. His knuckles were white.

            Joe sat up slowly, his hands unmoving where they were locked around the curve of the seat. No one else in the car made a sound while he struggled to catch his breath, each inhale hitching sharply in his throat like he was crying.

            “What the fuck?” James whispered.

            “Can we go faster?” Joe asked. His eyes were wet, glittering, and the driver met their eyes in the rearview mirror, looking horrified.

            “We’re already going too fast,” he said.

            “ _Faster_ ,” Joe demanded, a heavy growl in his voice that was at least partly werewolf in origin.

            The car sped up, and Andy chanced a look at Pete. Pete looked blank, shut off. Some childish part of Andy wanted to point out that he had been right, to tell Joe that they should have known the whole damn time. But he didn’t. He took deep breaths instead. He steadied himself, because someone had to be steady.

            “What are we walking into?” Andy asked. Joe shook his head before the question was all the way out.

            “I don’t- I can’t see the details. All I can do is feel him.” Joe’s voice snagged on the words, but didn’t crack.

            “What do you feel?” Andy asked. He glanced at Pete, then back at Joe in a way he hoped Joe took to mean “ _In as little detail as possible_.”

            “I don’t know,” Joe insisted. “It’s hard to focus on. Torture but-” he hissed in pain “-but nothing life-threatening. He’s in danger, but nothing lethal.”

            Andy felt Pete hit his breaking point at that.

            “Nothing lethal?” he repeated. “Nothing fucking lethal?! He’s being TORTURED-”

            “What do you want me to do?” Joe shouted. “We’re going as fast as we can!”

            “What are they doing?” Pete said.

            “I DON’T KNOW!”

            “Pete, we’re getting there,” Andy said. He valued his life enough not to tell Pete to calm down.

            “You didn’t hear him!”

            “Yes, I did, we both did, but we’re going back,” Andy said. Pete leaned back in the seat slowly.

            “What’s the plan?” Andy asked after a few minutes passed in tense silence.

            “We find them,” Joe said. “I shoot the evil Patrick in the head before he can do anything else, and we take the other three out. Then, based on how I feel secondhand, we cancel tonight’s show.”

            “How will you know which one to shoot? If he’s imitating Patrick?” Andy asked. He didn’t want to challenge Joe anymore or make anything worse, but he needed their plan to be solid.

            “Black eyes,” Joe said. “I’ll make sure to see his eyes first. But anyone with a clear shot on him should go for it.”

            Pete nodded, retreated back into himself. Andy couldn’t remember feeling less prepared to run into a supernatural fight, but what was the other option?

            The remainder of the car ride was agonizing and far too long. Joe fiddled with his gun, which James the reporter stared at with apprehension. Pete alternated between fidgeting and going abnormally still. And Andy sat there between them, useless.

            At one point, Pete’s phone rang again, and though he scrambled to answer it, he saw that it wasn’t Patrick’s number and promptly threw it to the ground.

            The driver pulled to a stop, but before they could jump out, said: “You guys sure you want off here?”

            The line had wrapped around the block, and the front entrance was no longer an option. After circling the building, they discovered the back entrance was similarly crawling with fans. Pete had never looked so angry to see a crowd.

            No one said, “now what?” It felt like that ought to have been Patrick’s line.

            “Make a distraction,” Joe said at last. Andy looked at him, but Joe was looking at Diaz and James. The only two not in Fall Out Boy, not caught up in this rescue mission. “Please. Go scream Pete’s name and point the other way, I’m begging you, anything.”

            “You wanted to see what it was really like to travel with Fall Out Boy,” Pete said. His voice still sounded so horribly empty. James nodded, and the two of them got out of the car.

            Maybe thirty seconds passed before James and Diaz had everyone’s attention fixed down a deserted road. The second the last head turned, Andy shoved Joe and Pete out of the car and they ran towards the venue. The three of them skidded into the building just as Andy began to hear a roaring scream from the fans behind them.

            “Where,” Pete said. “Where do we-?”

            “We’re gonna have to find him on our own,” Joe said. “Smell anything?”

            Andy shook his head. They appeared to have entered right into the green room. Food specifically catered to Fall Out Boy’s tastes were lying out, along with their stage clothes and guitars. The room was unfamiliar, but everything in it had grown to look homey. All of it false comfort at that moment.

            Andy breathed in deeper. He couldn’t smell anything, couldn’t sense anything, no signs of Patrick.

            “Then we search the place manually,” Joe said. “Grab something you can use as a weapon, and let’s go.”

            Andy, not in any mood to take his time, took a fire extinguisher from the wall and held it in front of him. They walked out into the hall, and Andy realized he could hear a lot of bustling and movement in the rooms around them. It was nearly time for soundcheck.

            Joe yanked open doors as they walked, but the most they found were some workers dressed in all black uniforms. They looked alarmed to be met by a guitarist holding a gun.

            The venue wasn’t that large. Nothing like the monstrous stadiums they had been touring with labyrinthine passages in the upper levels. There were only so many rooms in this venue. Andy was just starting to lose help in the whole thing when he saw a thin line of blood trailing out from the crack in the door in front of them.

            “Wait-” Andy began, but Joe was already kicking the door down.

            Patrick’s body lay prone on the ground, facing away from them and moving only for shallow breathing. He was blood soaked, but he wasn’t the mutilated mess Andy had expected. He had imagined it would be worse based on Joe’s reaction in the car.

            Andy wanted to be relieved, but something was wrong. It seemed as though the whole band realized something was wrong at the same moment, because Pete took in a sharp breath.

            The blood didn’t smell like anything at all.

            “Kill him,” Pete said.

            Everything moved too fast. Joe raised the gun to shoot, and the Patrick on the ground whirled to his feet, black eyes glittering behind blood-spattered glasses. Joe shot, and not-Patrick managed to twist out of the bullet’s path, inhumanly fast. Behind Andy, a door clicked firmly shut.

            Andy spun around to see the closed door, the lock turned on them. Not-Patrick began to laugh.

            “C’mon, Pete, aren’t you happy to see me?” Andy watched as his proportions morphed, stretching him upwards and into the form Andy recognized from before. Tall and skinny and distinctly not human. “You could give me a kiss.”

            Pete said nothing in response, no quip or angry remark, but instead launched himself at the egrigor. He planted his hands on the egrigor’s throat to strangle him, but the creature threw Pete aside like a ragdoll and then yanked the gun out of Joe’s grasp.

            “Too easy,” he said. He let out a wide, exaggerated yawn, and winked at the band. None of them moved.

            “He really does think he’s backstage,” Not-Patrick said. He paced back and forth in front of them. “Poor, feeble human senses are so easy to deceive. We were going to punish him no matter what he said, and it was fun tricking him and you. You three ran all the way here and he’s still convinced you’re all on the way to save the day.” The egrigor smiled like he’d told a brilliant joke.

            “This has been fun playing with you, boys,” he said, mockingly saluting them with the gun. “But I think it was enough just seeing your faces. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a singer to murder. I’ll see the rest of you another day.”

            With nothing else for it, Andy threw himself at the egrigor like Pete had. The creature seemed to be unaffected by the force, slamming Andy to the floor with no force at all. Before Andy could get back up, distract him, do something anything anything at all, the egrigor disappeared.

***

            Patrick was having a terrible day.

            In fact, saying it was a terrible day was seriously understating things. He needed a word stronger than terrible and longer than day.

            While the rest of his band was locked up in the back room of the venue, Patrick was alone with his thoughts in the dark.

            This was when he was in the in-between. When none of the egrigors were there with him, when he wasn’t actively being cut or burned or shocked or just taunted, they left him in the dark. The space he was in seemed like an empty supply closet when the light was on (one dim, orangey bulb that hung from the ceiling right above Patrick) but it could have also been the world’s worst office. Or a very small multi-purpose room. Maybe this venue just came with a convenient torture room, because none of those rooms, as far as Patrick figured, would have a heavy metal table bolted to the floor. A table that just so happened to have the perfect proportions to tie a grown man onto, each wrist and ankle lashed to one of the table legs so that he was spread eagle across the surface.

            Patrick knew it was metal because the room was freezing, and the table was even worse, like ice against his skin whenever he moved. He knew it was bolted to the floor because he’d been trying to shake himself or the table loose for hours. Maybe even days. It wasn’t like he could tell the time in the room. There was no window or clock, only the egrigors and the darkness.

            He wasn’t sure what he hated worse. Whenever he was left alone in the darkness, he was sure that was worse. But when the egrigors were there, he would give anything to be alone again.

            For example, while his band, unbeknownst to him, was getting in a fight with his egrigor, he was alone and he hated it.

            The room was thick with the smell of blood. It was too dark to see anything at all, not even vague shapes, so the two most prominent sensations Patrick felt were the stench in the room and the freezing cold. The room smelled like blood, rust, piss, bleach, and overwhelmingly of burnt human flesh. Breathing was a nauseating experience. The air felt heavy and everything smelled, and it was all made worse by the sticky taste of blood in Patrick’s mouth. He tried not to think about the scent and the taste because he’d been throwing up, and there was nothing left in his stomach. He’d had so little water that he wasn’t even gagging up bile. Whenever the smell and the twisting of his insides became too intense, he just dry heaved, choking on his own breath because he couldn’t lean over the side of the table to vomit. He was tied too tight even for that.

            The poison was definitely in the running for one of the worst things about this endless day, but it wasn’t _the_ worst.

            Patrick shuddered against the table. He assumed there was something like a bedpan under the table that was catching his blood. The only noise in the room was the unsteady dripping of his blood off the sides of the table and into the container. (Patrick had seen them tip something large into a smaller bucket, then take the bucket of blood off with them, but had missed some of the finer details in his pained haze.) Occasionally, the sound of dripping blood was broken up by the feeble chattering of his teeth.

            It was so cold. It had been cold in the room before he started losing blood, and now a couple pints down, Patrick felt like he’d been left out in the snow for a few hours. Shivering only made his muscles ache, so he flattened himself to the table as best he could and tried to will the surface beneath him to be warm.

            Patrick couldn’t really reconcile why he hated the dark so much. By all means he should have been happy that the egrigors weren’t there, that he wasn’t being tortured, but the dark made him only more afraid. He didn’t know when they would come back, if they would. The first few times the light had gone out and the door had slammed he had dangerously let himself hope for rescue, but by now it was just the horrible anticipation of when they would come back.

            Just his fears and the darkness, the pain and the cold, and the ever present drip drip dripping of his blood. He wondered idly if someone could be waterboarded by sound. Every drop from the table to the tray that lay beneath it hit Patrick’s psyche like a punch.

            The world’s longest day had begun at least a full day and a half previously for Patrick. He’d woken up in LA on Saturday morning. He had to finish packing with Pete because they had been too distracted the night before, so he woke up early and then went on a very long plane ride. Then Patrick had eaten the hotel dinner and something had gone wrong.

            He had been feverish almost immediately. Although he was exhausted, he couldn’t sleep. He was too sick and cold and sore to do much of anything. He’d assumed it was food poisoning at the time. Now, he supposed it technically was food poisoning, in a much more literal sense.

            On the second morning, twenty-four hours after he woke up the first time, Pete rubbed his back while he was bent over the toilet. Patrick told Pete to go out and have fun, but part of him had secretly hoped Pete would stay.

            So, he was thrilled when he heard the hotel door open again shortly after the band left. Pete’s voice had called out: “Sweetie?”

            Patrick lifted his head from the rim of the toilet. The sense of relief was overwhelming, and he tried to pull himself up into a sitting position to greet Pete when he came in.

            The door to the bathroom opened slowly, and it took Patrick too long to see the eyes. Too many seconds were wasted before he looked up and saw the egrigor staring back down at him, black eyes flat and face contorted into an expression of mocking pity.

            “Poor baby,” the egrigor said. “Are you feeling sick?”

            Patrick reached for his phone immediately, and then realized his hands were sliding right past where there should be pockets, because he was in pajama pants. Then he looked around for a weapon, but too late, too sick, too sluggish, the egrigor had him pinned to the wall, his hand clenched around Patrick’s throat.

            “Poor, sweet, Patrick,” Not-Pete said. He stroked Patrick’s sweat damp hair with his free hand. Patrick was struggling to breathe. He tried to pry Not-Pete’s fingers off his neck, to wriggle free, but he was so, so weak. Not in the normal human versus monster way, but in a way that made it hard for him to so much as stand up without getting out of breath.

            “Got a tummy ache?” Not-Pete sang at him. Just as Patrick began to see black spots on the edges of his vision, the egrigor let go. Patrick sank further to the ground, gasping for air and coughing, his mouth and his throat tasting like bile.

            “I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Not-Pete said. “It’s just poison. Just a little. It didn’t even get flagged at customs, though we had to sneak it in your bag. It’s not enough to kill you. Just enough to make this easier on me.”

            Patrick hadn’t even started to get up when Not-Pete landed a kick in the center of his chest. Patrick curled in on himself, eyes watering. He barely even felt the rope sliding over his wrists and ankles until the Pete-egrigor tied them tight enough to cut off blood flow.

            “Don’t want you trying to escape or anything,” Not-Pete explained. “Not that you would get far, but we really don’t want you being seen.”

            He got down on one knee and leaned in very close to Patrick. Patrick thought he might throw up again, as overwhelmed with nausea as he was.

            “Now listen to me carefully,” Not-Pete said. His voice was a cruel mockery of Pete’s, so close but still not him. “You’re kinda cute,” he tapped the underside of Patrick’s chin. “So I don’t want to hurt you too bad. The deal right now is I don’t gag you, you don’t scream, and then we don’t have to put duct tape over your mouth and watch you choke to death on your own vomit. Screaming won’t help you, got that?”

            Patrick didn’t get that. He was so sick that Not-Pete was swirling in front of him, all glittering black eyes and icy pale skin. But his throat felt so torn up and acidic that he didn’t think he could scream anyway, so he nodded.

            Besides, he had thought to himself then, Joe would feel him through the pack bond. They would get him out. Everything was going to be fine.

            Not-Pete ran a hand through his sweaty hair, smiled at Patrick, then scooped him up off the ground, bridal-style with one arm under his knees and the other behind his back. It was a testament to how sick Patrick was that he didn’t move. He wanted, more than anything, to jump out of the creature’s arms and fight, but he knew all he could do was roll and crash to the ground, and then where would he be? Still, as Not-Pete walked, Patrick swayed, and the sick sensation in his stomach coiled and writhed.

            Patrick gagged, and in a tiny act of defiance, he didn’t twist to vomit on the floor, but instead spat bile onto Not-Pete’s shirt. Not-Pete tensed up, his smile twisting into a grimace. He dropped Patrick into a big canvas laundry cart. The canvas was stretched taut over metal, and Patrick hadn’t been dropped lightly. His wrist twisted painfully enough to bring tears to his eyes, and he could already feel bruises from the impact with the metal start to bloom. Patrick gasped, a low noise coming from his throat. The Pete-Egrigor looked down at him with disgust.

            “Be good,” he said. He started throwing towels and sheets in on top of Patrick, burying him at the bottom of the laundry cart. Trapped under so many layers of fabric, Patrick was soon overwhelmed with his body heat and the smell of sickness.

            “Stay quiet,” he heard, and the laundry cart started rolling. The motion made Patrick’s stomach churn, but he curled in on himself under the heavy sheets and didn’t vomit.

            The cart rattled as it moved, and eventually Patrick heard the soft ding of an elevator. He had never had issues with claustrophobia before, but he felt unbearably ill while he was stuck in the cart in a way that had nothing to do with the poison.

            He heard the muffled sound of Not-Pete talking and laughing lightly with someone, and then a door opening. Even through the canvas, Patrick could feel the fresh air outside, not strong enough to cool his skin or clear away the smell at the bottom of the cart, but enough to feel good. The mere act of being outside, if only for a moment, made him feel almost instantly better. Diluted sunlight came through the fabric, and Patrick tried to twist closer to it, aggravating the ropes around him in the process, but then another door opened, and it was gone.

            Patrick was disoriented enough that he didn’t know how long Not-Pete rolled him in the cart. It felt like hours, but knowing how sickness made him, it had probably only been about ten minutes before the cart tipped over. The sheets and the towels and Patrick all spilled out onto a concrete floor, and before Patrick had a chance to look around, Not-Pete grabbed the ropes he was bound with and hauled him up onto a metal table.

            The room was cold, and the metal table freezing. Above him, Patrick could see one feeble light bulb, the filament visible inside it. He looked around the room to see precious little else, but through the open door came the other egrigors. The four of them filled up the small room, silent and unmoving for a moment before Not-Andy stepped up to the table and slashed through the ropes with a knife. A familiar knife, Patrick thought as he followed it’s glint up from the frayed ropes. His knife.

            As soon as he was free, Patrick threw himself forward, reaching out to grab his knife. He knew it was futile, but even if waiting for rescue was the logical response, that was _his_. He couldn’t even stand, but he half-threw himself off the table in an effort to grab the knife out of Not-Andy’s brightly tattooed hands. He got his hands around Not-Andy’s wrist before he felt a hand on his shoulder rip him away and slam him back down onto the table.

            “Hold him,” he heard Joe’s voice say, and one of them grabbed each of his limbs, which felt a little like overkill. One of the weaker ones could easily hold him down.

            As if responding to his thoughts, they switched off, one person holding his wrists and one holding his ankles as they tied them again. Each of his limbs was bound tight to one leg of the table, forcing him flat and spread-eagle. He was overcome with a wave of nausea but swallowed hard and stared up at the ceiling behind the light bulb. He didn’t want to see the things, didn’t even want to think about them, and so he focused on breathing and trying to stay calm.

            His thoughts about staying calm were abruptly lost when he felt one of the legs of his pajama pants pulled taut, and he heard the sound of ripping fabric.

            “What are- what the hell are you doing?” Patrick asked. He craned his neck up at a painful ankle to look down at his legs, and saw himself -- the dark, twisted version of himself -- slicing calmly through the cloth with his knife.

            “I feel like it’s pretty obvious, even to someone like you,” Not-Patrick said. When he finished the long line by slicing all the way up through the waistband, he moved over to the second leg.

            “ _Why_ the hell are you doing it, then?” Patrick asked. He tried to keep the panic out of his rough voice, though he knew they knew what he was thinking, knew it was stupid to try.

            “Because,” Not-Patrick said, casting aside the scraps of fabric that had once been Batman pajama pants, “It’s much easier to cut cloth when it’s dry, and you’re going to be bleeding soon. Also,” he sliced up the legs of Patrick’s boxers with two quick strokes. Patrick panicked and thrashed in the too-tight bindings, which did nothing but dig the ropes further into his wrists. “It’ll be good incentive for you to try not to run away. Unless you want to escape into the venue and run into your fans like this.” He ripped the boxers away.

            “Finally,” he ripped Patrick’s shirt apart down the middle of his chest and up each of the sleeves. “It’s going to be much colder like this. Much more vulnerable. Just another little touch to make you feel worse.”

            Not-Patrick ripped the last of the clothes aside and smiled brightly down at Patrick.

            “And we do like to be thorough.”

            Patrick could look up at them, it was just difficult. He twisted his neck to see eight black eyes and four nearly identical smiles, ones full of self-satisfied malice. He did feel intensely vulnerable, but mostly he felt cold. The table was painful against his bare skin.

            “We’ll give it a minute to get the, ah, blood flowing,” Not-Joe said, and then snorted. “Don’t strain yourself trying to escape, Patrick. I’d hate to see you hurt yourself. We’d rather do that ourselves.”

            The four of them then filed out of the room, turned out the light, and shut the door.

            Left alone in the cold and the dark, Patrick screamed. The egrigors were right in that he didn’t want to be found totally stripped. However, given the choice between begging some fan to throw a blanket over him and being locked up and subjected to whatever they wanted to do to him, he would gladly deal with a fan or two. At the very least, once his band showed up, they’d need to know where he was.

            But it didn’t take long for all of the shouting to strain the muscles in his throat. Very soon, he was gagging again. His throat burned, and he finally leaned back against the table, breathing heavily. Maybe if he waited to hear someone pass by, he could start shouting. He should save his voice for that, but he didn’t like simply waiting. The darkness and the silence were suffocating.

            If Patrick focused till his eyes hurt, he could see a faint outline around the door. He couldn’t hear or see or smell anything else. It started out as something disconcerting but became a source of intense anxiety as time went on. He couldn’t tell how much time was passing, couldn’t tell what was going on at all. His thoughts started spiraling downward into a steady rhythm of wanting to get out, he wanted to get out, he wanted to get out.

            Patrick started tugging on the ropes. The ropes dug into the skin around his joints but didn’t give or loosen even a little. He recalled hearing somewhere that if you broke your thumb in a certain way you could escape handcuffs, but ropes were tighter than handcuffs, and Patrick had no idea how to break his own thumbs.

            He stopped pulling at his wrists when he felt something wet running down his arms. He couldn’t see, but it couldn’t have been anything besides blood. Patrick made a small noise, somewhere between fear and disgust, and let his arms and legs lie flat and still again.

            And he waited. He waited and waited and waited.

            After what felt like hours, the door opened again, and the light flicked on. Patrick felt blinded by the sudden brightness in the room.

            “How are we feeling?” Not-Patrick asked. Patrick wished he could move his legs, cover himself up, do anything, but as it was, he settled for glaring at him.

            “You would know,” Patrick said dryly, aiming to sound braver than he felt.

            “We thought we would give you some time alone with your thoughts,” Not-Patrick said. “I told them you would overthink until you started hurting yourself.” He was behind Patrick in a flash, out of sight.

            “Guess I was right.”

            He jammed his fingers down into Patrick’s wrist, the one that had started bleeding. He pushed and rubbed against the raw skin until Patrick screamed, and blood ran fresh into his hand and across his arm. Not-Patrick laughed, delighted.

            “You’re very weak, aren’t you?” he said. “I mean, I know you are, obviously. But you’re so fragile, really. How did you make it this far?”

            He moved his hand and pressed down on Patrick’s leg, harder and harder until Patrick was sure he was leaving a huge, splotchy bruise. That time, Patrick didn’t scream, just kept his eyes closed and gritted his teeth. Not-Patrick stopped leaning on him and paced away so that Patrick could only see his back.

            “I thought we could play a game,” Not-Patrick said. “Would you be interested in that?”

            Patrick let out a low, disbelieving laugh. “Not especially.”

            Not-Patrick spun around, lifting up Patrick’s knife. The silver blade glinted in the dim light.

            “Shame,” he said. “But we’re going to play anyway.”

            “Do you steal most of your lines from the Saw movies?” Patrick asked. “Because those went out of style years ago.”

            “I didn’t say you could talk back,” Not-Patrick said. The mirthful look on his face was gone, and when he returned to Patrick’s side, his expression was blank and stoic. “It’ll be less painful if you play along.”

            As he finished his sentence, he lowered the knife. Patrick couldn’t see it, but he could feel it slicing into his skin, sharp and sudden. He hissed in through his teeth as Not-Patrick cut him. It wasn’t a quick slash; it felt deliberate and slow. Not-Patrick lifted the knife, pressed down and started slicing again right next to where he had just cut Patrick, and kept going, lifting and pressing down for small, deliberate cuts, each close to the other. Patrick could feel his blood flowing freely down his side and heard it dripping onto the table.

            A few small slices, practically incisions, and Not-Patrick pulled the knife away. Patrick tried to loosen the muscles in his jaw from where he’d been gritting his teeth, but was relieved at the fact that his face still felt dry.

            “Was that it?” he asked in disbelief.

            “Not exactly,” Not-Patrick said. “This is where the game comes in-- what does it say?”

            Patrick didn’t respond. He laid still, trying to process that.

            “What does-- did you ask me ‘what does it say’?”

            “I did,” Not-Patrick said. “I wrote something. What does it say?”

            “Are you fucking kidding me?” Patrick asked. He tried to crane his head up to look at his stomach, and Not-Patrick shoved his head back down so hard that Patrick’s skull hit the metal table with a sickening crack.

            “If you don’t have a guess, I’ll just go over it again,” Not-Patrick said.

            “No, wait,” Patrick said, eyeing the knife without looking up. “Um, does it, does it say… is it a name?”

            Not-Patrick smiled down at him, his eyes empty. Then he lowered the knife and started cutting again, running the blade over the cuts that he had already left.

            The second time, the cuts were deeper and it was harder for Patrick to keep his cool. He hissed in pain, eyes watering as he laid there. He tried to focus on the cuts, on what they felt like, but all they felt like was pain. It was impossible to turn that pain into words or letters in his head.

            “Any guesses?” Not-Patrick asked when he pulled back.

            “The last- the last letter is a T, right?” Patrick asked.

            Not-Patrick didn’t answer. He just went back to cutting.

            This time Patrick paid attention. One stroke up, two to the side. One up, one down, one to the side that connected the two. The letter T again. Patrick made a twisted up face that had nothing to do with the pain.

            “Fat,” he said. “It says ‘fat,’ right?”

            “Very good,” Not-Patrick said. He moved to Patrick’s other side while blood was still freely flowing from his stomach. Patrick felt like his breathing got shallower as he tried to make sense of what was happening. Not-Patrick was about to dig the knife in again when Patrick cried out to stop him.

            “What are you doing?!” he asked. For the first time, he was starting to feel really afraid.

            Not-Patrick gave him his usual too big smile, the kind that showed all of his white teeth.

            “Why don’t you tell me when you figure it out?” he asked.

            He started carving again. This word was much longer, and Patrick was distracted, unable to focus the first time he wrote it out till nearly the end of the word, letters that felt like an ‘N’ and a ‘G.’

            “I don’t- I don’t know what that-” Patrick began, and Not-Patrick began carving again.

            On the fourth try, Patrick guessed “annoying,” and Not-Patrick moved up to Patrick’s shoulder without speaking. Patrick tried to focus before he started to cut this time, catching a loopy letter that he carved without picking up the knife, one that might have been a ‘W.’ He guessed ‘weak’ right on the first try, and Not-Patrick moved on again.

            At ‘weak,’ Patrick gave up on his plan of trying not to cry. At ‘conceited’ getting carved just under his ribs, he learned that after Not-Patrick cut the word five times, he would tell Patrick what the word was and move to the next one. When ‘pathetic’ was written alongside his spine, Not-Patrick had held Patrick down and flipped him onto his stomach, then tied him down again so he could carve on his back. But Patrick didn’t say out loud what he’d been dreading until he was lying on his back again and Not-Patrick was cutting a word right above the scar that already crossed his chest diagonally—the scar that originally came from a wendigo and seemed to keep wanting to reopen.

            Patrick thought he knew what the word was after it was cut the first time, but he didn’t guess. Instead, he took in a deep, shuddering breath and listened to the uneven pattering of blood spilling over the edges of the table.

            “The words,” he said. He was embarrassed with how his voice sounded, exactly like someone who had been crying. “They’re not just insults. They’re mine. They’re things I think about myself.”

            “Well done, Patrick,” Not-Patrick said. He jammed his nails into Patrick’s side, pulling at the cuts on his skin where ‘stupid’ bled onto the table. Patrick let out a hitched gasp. “Not quite as idiotic as you might have been. They’re yours. Ours, really. And maybe I’m biased, but they all seem pretty fair to me.”

            Patrick closed his eyes like it made a difference, and Not-Patrick cut over the word again.

            “‘Human,’” Patrick said. “It says ‘human.’”

            “Too true,” Not-Patrick said. He suddenly tore his knife across Patrick’s chest, ripping open the old scar, soaking Patrick’s chest further with hot blood, the only warm thing in the room. Patrick let out a noise that was almost a sob.

            “Not a bad one to end on,” Not-Patrick said. “I could keep going, but we want to leave some space for, well, for what’s to come. We’ll give you a bit of time to bleed out in here before we collect the blood. Have fun. I hope you can feel every one of those words.”

            He flipped out the light and slammed the door. He had to know that Patrick _could_ feel every one of the words, but Patrick didn’t want to say as much. His breath came unevenly, and in the silence, the sound of his blood falling was even worse than before.

            Patrick tried to tell himself not to go to pieces, but he was shaking anyway. Maybe because of the cold. Maybe because he was in pain. Maybe fear. But he felt like it was most likely something that was part shock and part whatever emotion came after humiliation. There were words carved all over his torso, from his ribs to his shoulders to his back, all the way down to the tops of his thighs. Not just words, but insults, all the negative things he thought about himself. He thought it over and over again, waiting for it to make sense. Instead, he just felt numb.

            If he tried very hard not to think about the words, then he couldn’t feel them individually. Instead of feeling centralized pain, he felt the sharp stabbing cuts all over his skin, already exacerbated by the cold. Everything stung, and the sound of his blood dripping off the table made it all more awful. He tried desperately to think of something outside of this room, of something outside of the cold air and the blood and the _stupid pathetic human weak loud worthless_ -

            He thought of the band. Everything still hurt, insistent and painful, but he could at least focus on the band. He thought of Pete, who had been rubbing his back just that morning while he’d been throwing up. He thought of Joe and Andy, and how they had to be on their way. He was panicked, absolutely fucking terrified, and in more pain than he could remember being in for a long time. He wished he knew how to do the thing Ryan had done, how to talk to someone in his pack using just his mind. It hadn’t seemed like the kind of thing he’d needed before, but it sure would help now.

            Eventually, he’d exhausted himself trying to think of anything besides the pain. And it was still impossible to tell if any time had passed.

            After he’d given up on anything but laying there and letting the hurt overcome him in the darkness, he still waited for what felt like an eternity before the door opened again.

            “What now?” Patrick asked.

            “What, tired of us already?” It sounded like Joe’s voice, and Patrick tried harder to look up at them. He didn’t want to mistake the others for his band. It was easier with himself, easier to distinguish, but these, the other three, they sounded like his friends.

            Patrick pulled at the ropes, felt his skin start tearing on his uninjured wrist.

            “When I get out of here…” he began. The threat in his voice was overshadowed by the shaking in it.

            “You’re not very intimidating,” Not-Joe said. He leaned down underneath the table, out of Patrick’s sight, and Patrick’s breathing became panicked. He couldn’t see where he was, couldn’t tell what he was doing, but he soon heard the sloshing of blood.

            Not-Andy took something outside, and then the three of them were all at his side again, eyes blank. Patrick’s heart beat so hard it seemed to form its own ache in the center of his chest.

            “You guys can stay, if you want,” Not-Joe said. “This one is mostly mine, but jump in if you feel like it.”

            “Another game?” Patrick asked. Again, he meant it to sound bored and cool, but his voice shook.

            “A better game,” Not-Joe said. “I promised to burn you, remember?”

            Patrik barely had a second to work up to a panic before Not-Joe pulled a thin, metal instrument out from behind him.

            “Hold him,” Not-Joe said. “Don’t want him to flinch and mess up my work.”

            Hands went to hold Patrick down, making him more afraid of what was about to happen. He swallowed convulsively as he looked up at the tool Not-Joe was holding, thin as a pen with a glowing orange end.

            “What is that?” Patrick asked. Not-Joe smiled wordlessly at him and jabbed it into Patrick’s side just under his arm.

            This time, Patrick screamed. Thoughts of saving his voice for when he heard someone close were thrown out the window as he screamed so loud that he felt his throat protest. Whatever Joe -- Not-Joe was using was burning, like he had accidentally touched a hot stove but it kept going. He couldn’t pull away from the intense, mind-numbing heat. All he could do was scream until it felt like his throat would rip.

            When Not-Joe finally pulled back, Patrick was panting, his breath coming in staggered sobs.

            “What does it say?” Not-Joe asked cheerfully. Patrick, uncertain as to whether or not he could actually form words, much less a sentence, just gasped for air, tears smarting in his eyes.

            “I’ll try again,” Not-Joe said, and the burning started again.

            Patrick, once he could think around the pain, realized that this was going to much harder than the cuts. This was a more precise tool, but he felt the pain in a less centralized way. The burning hurt too much to make sense of. It was impossible to follow the individual strokes. After he had gone over the word five times, and Patrick was crying with full force, Not-Joe sighed.

            “This might be more difficult than we thought,” he said. “It says ‘naive,’ and that was mine.”

            “Yours?” Patrick asked.

            Not-Joe didn’t elaborate, just moved onto the next one.

            The next word was longer, more painful, but on the second time, Patrick recognized the curvy last letter as an ‘s.’ On the third try he got it right with ‘reckless.’

            “Another one of mine,” Not-Joe said. “Now, let’s see.”

            He started burning low across Patrick’s hips, underneath where his waistband would lie and far too close to Patrick’s dick to be comfortable. It wasn’t too long of a word, but still felt like acid on sensitive skin. Patrick smelled burning hair as he went over it the third time.

            “You want a hint?” Not-Joe asked. Patrick must have nodded desperately, because he chuckled.

            “This one’s Pete’s.”

            The hint didn’t help Patrick guess the word (“plain”) but it did make him whine a little more frantically.

            The worst of the burns were the repeated words. Knowing that ‘stubborn’ was carved into his lap and burnt across the small of his back at the same time felt unfair.

            And all while Not-Joe burnt, Patrick cried. Gross, ugly tears of pain, the kind of crying that made snot trail out of his nose so thick that it got in his hair. Not-Andy took hold of the tool (soldering iron? Torture pen? What would Patrick know?) and wrote a few words in, pushing harder than Not-Joe so that it hurt more, but was also easier to guess.

            When his skin was thoroughly covered in burns that flared with pain, when he was a disgusting, bleeding, snotty mess, Not-Joe flipped him back onto his back, and dragged the hot metal over the big wendigo scar on his chest, and over the word ‘human.’

            “That one was Joe’s,” he said. “Mine. He actually didn’t mean this one as an insult, but I thought it would be nice to cauterize the wound for you. I’m thoughtful like that.”

            Patrick didn’t say anything. Mostly because he didn’t think he could talk without whimpering.

            “C’mon,” he heard Pete’s voice, but it wasn’t the real Pete, he was sure. “They’re going to find the last message soon. Give him a minute, let him sit with it.”

            “I’m in charge, here,” Not-Joe snapped.

            “Guys,” Not-Andy warned. In a huff, Not-Joe walked out of the door, followed by Not-Andy. Not-Pete lingered for a moment, then leaned down and pressed his lips to the big, angry slash across Patrick’s chest. Patrick cried out, and Not-Pete chuckled.

            “Love you, baby,” he said mockingly, and then he flipped out the light.

            Patrick longed to scream, but his throat felt thick and dry, and it ached nearly as much as the rest of his body. Everything hurt. His aching muscles, which had been stuck in the same position too long. His burnt and cut and stinging skin. His strained wrists and ankles. His throbbing head.

            After what, again, felt like an unbearably long time, Patrick decided he couldn’t just keep waiting for the next terrible thing to happen. He started pulling at his bonds with new passion, not caring when he felt pain or more blood trickling over his hands and feet. He just wanted out, he wanted to be anywhere else no matter the cost. He yanked frantically at the rope until he thought he felt it start to give.

            Behind the door, he heard the technical sounds of a crew setting up for a concert. He yanked on the ropes, making a pained whine as he pulled with all his might, the sound covered up by someone wheeling something past the door.

            No matter how much it hurt, it was better than thinking about the words. Anything was better than remembering the burns that only hurt worse and worse as time went on, making him whimper at odd intervals because they all just hurt so fucking badly. The only thing that soothed burns, as far as Patrick remembered, was cold water. He didn’t think he would be getting any of that anytime soon.

            Right up there with the physical pain, he also didn’t want to think about the burns because of what they meant. Logically, it made sense. It was meant to degrade, to humiliate, to make Patrick feel like the band was attacking him rather than those monsters. But logic wasn’t the easiest thing to reach for, and if Patrick stopped struggling, stopped trying to escape for even a second, he would definitely fall apart.

            Everyone thought terrible things about people they loved, he reminded himself. It wasn’t as though he had never thought that Joe was a douchebag or Andy was self-righteous when they were pissed at each other. But nothing that Patrick thought about them in the heat of a fight was branded into their skin.

            The door flung open again, interrupting him. He didn’t even try to guess how long it had been. Every time felt both shorter and longer than the last. He didn’t balk until he saw all four of them enter the room. Patrick closed his eyes, trying to get his breathing to steady, to pretend he was doing any better than he was.

            “We’re going to give your boyfriend a call,” Not-Joe said. “But before we do, we want to discuss some rules with you.”

            “You can speak,” Not-Andy said. “When we tell you that you can. Not before, not after.”

            “You can’t disclose anything about what we’ve done or where we are,” Not-Pete said.

            “And if you want to scream,” Not-Patrick looked happy. “Feel free.”

            “Break any rule, and Pete’ll take care of you,” Not-Joe said. “If you care to demonstrate.”

            Not-Pete struck out, fast enough that Patrick didn’t see what he was holding before he felt electricity course through him. He wasn’t even sure if he screamed before Not-Pete pulled back, looking pleased with himself. A taser, Patrick thought faintly. His whole body felt raw after the electric shock.

            “So be good,” Not-Joe said. “Oh, but just in case.”

            There was the sound of tearing fabric behind Patrick, and something was stuffed in his mouth then tied around the back of his head, something the precise, creamy color of the hotel sheets that was now a gag around him.

            “And… now, he’s got it,” Not-Andy said.

            Not-Patrick pulled out the phone -- Patrick’s phone -- and dialed.

            “ _Hello_?” Patrick heard Pete’s scared voice coming through the phone. He wanted to cry, wanted to scream and snatch the phone, and it must have shown on his face, because Not-Pete brandished the taser in his hand threateningly.

            “That took you a while,” Not-Patrick said cheerfully. “Really, we thought you were going to be faster with this.”

            “ _You didn’t leave especially thorough clues_ ,” Pete said. Patrick could hear the strain in his voice, the barely contained panic. This, he realized, was its own kind of torture, almost worse than the physical. He wanted to say something, had to, but couldn’t. “ _Where is he_?”

            “C’mon,” Not-Patrick said. “We’re having fun, aren’t we? I am. What good is the climax without a little foreplay first?” He looked Patrick up and down, and Patrick cringed away as best he could.

            “ _We’re not playing anything,_ ” Pete growled. “ _Where is he?_ ”

            “Patience, Petey,” Not-Patrick said. His voice sounded almost flirtatious. “Did Andy like the notes? I was kind of hoping he’d lick the blood to check.”

            “ _Where the fuck is he?!_ ” Pete was losing any semblance of staying calm.

            “That’s not how we play the game,” Not-Patrick sang. He looked like he’d be twirling a phone cord if he could, and Patrick growled around his spit-soaked gag. “It’s no fun if we tell you everything. We just wanted to call and let you know that you’re running a bit behind. Oh! And your boyfriend wanted me to tell you that he really, really misses you. Do you wanna talk to him?”

            Patrick didn’t pay attention to whatever came next on the phone, because his knife was used to cut away his gag, finally letting him get in enough air again. Not-Pete tapped the inert taser against his side again and muttered “or else.”

            He jabbed the thing into one of Patrick’s many burns, and Patrick screamed. Once again, his plan for keeping cool had gone out the nonexistent window.

            “ _PATRICK!_ ”

            Though it was already on speakerphone, the egrigor held the phone up to Patrick’s ear. Patrick was so disoriented, so lost in pain that he couldn’t make sense of it at first.

            Still, his automatic reaction when hearing Pete upset was to reassure him, so he leaned into that instinct.

            “It’s nothing,” he said thickly, lying without even having to think about it. “It’s fine, it’s-” he moved the wrong way and felt every cut and burn that he had managed to push to the back of his mind. He screamed again, the scream sticking in his ruined throat, the sound as pathetic as the word stinging somewhere on his torso.

            “ _Where are you?_ ” Pete cried, terror clear in his voice. “ _What’s happening? Where did you end up? We’re on our way, everything’s gonna be fine I swear it’s going to be-!_ ”

            “Pete, I-” Patrick interrupted him. Getting shocked hurt, but Patrick decided to risk it. Anything, he thought, would be better than being stuck here. He saw his own egrigor’s eyes narrow angrily a split second before he spoke. “Venue,” he said, glancing at the furious faces of the egrigors and bracing himself as best he could. “Venue we’re at the venue somewhere backstage I don’t-”

            Not-Pete slammed the taser to his skin again, and Patrick screamed. This time the electrical shock didn’t stop right away, and Patrick kept screaming until he thought his vocal cords would tear to shreds. Only then was it finally removed.

            He heard Not-Joe saying something he couldn’t make out. It felt, in the haze of pain, like he had briefly lost comprehension of language. Then he heard the sound of a phone hanging up. Sudden, stupid grief overwhelmed him. He wanted Pete back, wanted to hear his voice again. They barely got to speak to each other.

            “Told you so,” Not-Patrick said. His voice sounded like it was coming from very far away. Everything still felt fuzzy from all the pain, and Patrick vaguely hoped that he might pass out. He’d heard about people passing out from pain. Being unconscious sounded like a much better way to pass time.

            “He’s an idiot,” Pete’s voice said in disbelief. Patrick made a face, trying to will himself into alertness, to see who Pete was annoyed with.

            “They still might find us,” he heard Joe say. “It’s unlikely, but-”

            “But what?” Not-Patrick said. The voices were getting clearer, and suddenly Patrick snapped back into awareness. Painful, sharp, burning aching everything. He opened his eyes with more force than he would have thought necessary, and saw the four of them standing over him, bickering amongst themselves. “If they get here, I can stop them. He won’t be any use, and I doubt any of them will be much good when they see him.”

            “Mine will,” Not-Joe said. “Not everyone is in love with you.”

            “It’s a moot point,” Not-Pete said. “They won’t find us. They believe him, because he believes himself.”

            Someone grabbed Patrick’s face, and he made a noise of protest, trying to pull his head away. But he was forced to keep still, and he stared up at Not-Pete.

            “I have to admit, I see the appeal,” he said. “He’s strong. And he isn’t quite as dumb as you think.”

            He eyed Patrick with something like interest, the way someone would survey something they had just bought. Patrick still felt fuzzy, drifting on the edges of reality, but he was sure that he did not like this Pete, this creature. Patrick worked up what little spit there was left in his mouth, sticky and dry after an eternity with no water, and spat it directly into the egrigor’s face.

            Not-Pete drew back slowly, his whole body tense with disgust. Andy’s laughter -- Not-Andy, that was -- came from somewhere behind Patrick.

            “Well, I’d hold off on the wedding, if I were you,” Not-Andy said.

            Not-Pete picked a piece of cloth off the ground that looked suspiciously like a scrap of Patrick’s old shirt, wiped off his face, and then slapped Patrick across the face. It hurt; he had put enough strength into the strike that Patrick tasted blood in his mouth, but it was meant to be degrading. Like Patrick wasn’t already undressed. Like he wasn’t already covered in bleeding insults and crying.

            “Overkill,” Patrick muttered. The word came out slurred, but they got the gist of it.

            “He’s really pathetic,” Not-Andy said, voice cold. “Should we do anything to make sure he’s more… present?”

            “I don’t know,” Not-Joe drawled. “He looks thirsty. Did you want water?”

            Patrick bit down his lip and swallowed back the desperate noise he almost made at the mere thought of water. He could feel the throbbing of a dehydration headache throughout his skull, and a patch of his throat had started to feel permanently dry. But he wasn’t ready to start begging. He nodded instead and hoped there was still some semblance of a threat in his eyes.

            Not-Joe nodded to Not-Patrick, and he walked out of the room. Patrick laid on the table tensely, waiting.

            “It’s almost a shame we’re doing this just for fun,” Not-Pete mused. “You’d be wonderful as a spy. Look how well you’d hold up to interrogation!”

            Patrick thought privately that if telling these things some important secret would make them leave, he would betray anything or anyone.

            Not-Patrick walked back in with a glass full of something clear. Patrick couldn’t feel anything but apprehension seeing him with it, though.

            “What’s the catch?” he asked. His voice sounded absolutely terrible.

            “It is water,” Not-Pete said. “But I can promise you that you won’t be happy drinking this.”

            Patrick believed that. He didn’t know what was wrong with it, but he was so unbearably thirsty. Not-Pete was giving him a questioning look, and he didn’t want to miss his chance.

            “Fine,” he croaked. “Yeah, fine.”

            “Open wide,” Not-Patrick said, his face impassive. Patrick opened his mouth and tensed, bracing himself for the worst. He half expected it to be vinegar or more poison, but after a second, there was water splashing into his mouth. Water that was so hot it was nearly boiling.

            Patrick began to sputter, coughing up hot water so violently that it splashed across his chest, re-igniting the pain in his burns. Almost as an afterthought, he tried to swallow as much of the water as he could. The hot water scorched his throat, but it wasn’t as bad as the burns on his skin, and he was still desperate for the water.

            The egrigors were cackling, almost bent over laughing at Patrick. Water dripped into Patrick’s hair and cooled rapidly in the icy room, though the burns touched by the hot water were still stinging like they were fresh injuries on his body. Patrick kept his eyes shut.

            “We’ll be back soon,” Not-Pete promised. The light behind Patrick’s eyelids went out, and he heard the door slam.

            He waited like that for an impossibly long time. In spite of the pain, the water helped a little, he thought. His head felt a bit clearer, though he wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

            At some point in time while he waited there, blood dripping and skin searing, the rest of his band was brought in, although Patrick was unaware of it. He thought that this gap of time felt longer than usual, and the whole time he spent struggling with the ropes.

            He focused on his right hand, because it was already bloodier, and he might as well keep the worst of the damage on one side. He knew that his counterpart had to know what was happening, but Not-Patrick hadn’t stopped him yet, so Patrick kept at it.

            Each tug sent bursts of pain up his arm, but he kept pulling regardless, teeth gritted. After the day he’d had, he was used to pain. Patrick bit down on his lip, hard enough nearly to draw blood, and pulled harder on his wrist, straining with all his might. He leaned as far as he could to the right, took a deep breath, and yanked.

            He heard a tiny pop and felt fire stab up his arm. Patrick hissed through his teeth, tears smarting at his eyes again, but he didn’t scream. He couldn’t see his wrist, but he suspected that it was sprained rather than broken, because he’d been able to hold back a scream, and he hadn’t heard anything crack.

            After taking brief inventory of what hurt and what he could still move, Patrick pulled again, and to his intense shock, his hand slid right out of the ropes binding him to the edge of the table. It was all Patrick could do not to start celebrating, but he knew he was running on limited time.

            Patrick immediately stretched over to the other side of the table and began undoing the ropes on his left hand. His fingers were clumsy and slippery with blood, but he was able to undo the knot on his hand enough to free himself.

            Once he was sitting up and in full control of both his hands, Patrick untied his ankles in no time. He made to stand up and immediately fell over, barely catching himself on the table again. He was weak, weak from blood loss and cold and poison and being tied flat to the table for hours. Also just weak as a person. He had the word written on him to prove it. But he forced himself back to his feet and flipped on the light.

            The room looked worse when he wasn’t lying down. The whole place was a mess of gore. The table was covered in blood, and the tray underneath it had caught a good deal more. Some of the blood had splattered onto the sheets and towels, and there were even a few spots of red on the walls. For all of this, there was nothing in the room that Patrick could feasibly use as a weapon.

            Certain he was running out of time, Patrick circled the table, looking for something, anything that could function as a weapon. The knife, the metal rod they had burnt him with, both of those were gone. And now Patrick could hear footsteps hurrying down the hall.

            Patrick took one of the sheets off the ground and tied it around himself quickly, figuring that any covering was better than nothing. He clenched his injured fist and gave himself a silent apology. The door slammed open.

            Patrick got one glimpse of his egrigor, fury etched into every line of his face, and then he jumped with what little energy was left in his legs and slammed his fist directly into the light bulb, plunging them both into darkness.

            Broken glass rained down, sprinkling into his hair, and Patrick pulled on the wrecked remains of the light bulb, tearing it out of the ceiling. A light came from somewhere down the hallway, just illuminating their silhouettes. The egrigor made for Patrick, and Patrick slammed the jagged glass edge of the light bulb into Not-Patrick’s neck.

            Patrick didn’t get to see him die; there wasn’t enough light for that. But he felt hot blood spray out onto his hand, and heard a terrible, keening gurgle coming from Not-Patrick. Patrick dragged the egrigor closer to the door so he could see properly. Patrick caught one glimpse of the creature’s furious, inhuman face and his black eyes, and then he dissolved into dust.

            Patrick stared at the empty space where the egrigor had been a second ago, still clutching his makeshift weapon. Then he started running.

            The hall was dark, but Patrick could see a grayish light at the end of it. He wasn’t running fast enough, was weak and barely on his feet, but he ran nonetheless. He was so desperate to get out, to get to the band or just to anyone. The sheet threatened to tangle around his legs, and he hitched it up with one hand while he half-jogged down the hall.

            The gray light turned out to be another nondescript hallway. Each side was lined with doors, but he couldn’t stop to try any of them. Instead he kept running, pushing himself further down the hallway with the thought that he had to find an exit somewhere, had to be able to get out.

            Another turn, another hallway, and at the end of it, Patrick saw a door with a push bar instead of a knob with a lock like all the other doors. Patrick pushed this last door open, straining under the weight, and was almost blinded by a brilliant orange sky. The sun was setting, he realized. He’d found a way outside.

            “Not so fast,” a voice sang behind him. Patrick should have run, but he turned around slowly.

            Not-Patrick stood in the hallway behind him, in the same suit. There wasn’t a drop of blood on him and he looked livid.

            “No,” Patrick said, shaking his head. This felt too nightmarish to be real. “No, no no no, I killed you, I killed you!”

            “You did,” Not-Patrick agreed. “Don’t think it’ll go unpunished, either. You’re going to deeply regret that.”

            Patrick turned and ran, got one foot on the sun-warmed street outside, then the hands wrapped around his waist and tugged him back. Patrick screamed, kicking and flailing as he tried to pull his way back to the open door, but then someone pulled the door shut.

            All the other egrigors were there, watching blankly as Patrick struggled in his own double’s arms.

            “I killed you,” Patrick spat over his shoulder. “I killed you, you died, I watched you dissolve!”

            “You wanna hear something cool?” Patrick couldn’t see the egrigor, but he could hear the hoarse whisper loud and clear, could feel the warm breath on his ear. “I can’t die.”

            Patrick thrashed and screamed, but he might as well have been fighting stone for all the good it did. He let out the loudest scream he could, and Not-Pete stepped forward, covering up his mouth.

            “Shh,” Not-Pete said, “shh, it’s okay. You wanna walk back, or do you wanna be dragged?”

            Patrick just stared at him, unable to make a sound, still struggling. Not-Joe jerked his head at Not-Patrick, who dropped Patrick.

            Fruitless as it was, Patrick tried to start running again, and he was caught at once. Not-Patrick held him up by the shoulders, lowered him slightly so that he was in an awkward, half-seated position over the ground.

            “No more running, then,” Not-Patrick said. He stomped down on Patrick’s ankle and shattered it.

            Patrick was right to think that his wrist hadn’t been broken. This, this was a broken bone, and he could feel the pain like getting stabbed over and over and over again, all up his leg and down into his foot. Black spots bloomed in Patrick’s vision and took over his sight.

            When he came to his senses again, his wrists were already tied and they were tying down his ankles.

            “Don’t,” Patrick slurred, “Don’t, don’t do that-” he screamed as they pulled the rope tight across his broken ankle, pain shooting through him again. He didn’t pass out that time, though he wanted to. His vision swam, and he could distantly hear laughter when the door shut again.

            Patrick laid there, unable to think or move through the pain. The door opened again and Patrick wasn’t even shocked when just Pete-- Not-Pete -- came in.

            “Patrick,” he said. Patrick didn’t look up. It hurt to move his neck, and the monster wasn’t worth the effort. He could think of nothing that was.

            Not-Pete sat down on the edge of the table. He didn’t speak, just trailed his fingers back and forth in the blood on the table. Some of it was dry and flaked off at the touch, some was fresher and squeaked when Not-Pete rubbed at it.

            He sat there for a while as though waiting for something, but Patrick didn’t speak. He didn’t have the energy left.

            “You must have questions,” Not-Pete said. “About today.”

            It sounded like he was giving Patrick permission. Fighting through the layers of pain that were numbing his mind to find his voice, he started at the beginning.

            “Poison?”

            His voice sounded terrible. Rough and sticky and spent, infinitely worse than the last day of a tour. Not-Pete hummed in the back of his throat.

            “I’m rather proud of that, actually,” he said. “I poisoned you. _Lobelia inflata_ , common name of Indian Tobacco. They used to use it as a cure for asthma, did you know?

            “It’s a fairly common plant that grows by the side of the road in the midwest, so no difficulties getting ahold of it. The question then, is how did I think of it? And that’s why I’m so proud. You see, your boyfriend, Pete, he’s sick.” The egrigor pointed to his temple with a small smile on his face. “Sick in the head. And he’s scared of everything with no good reason. Sometimes he spirals out of control. Sometimes he researches every airline he can find to see what gives him the best chance of not crashing and dying. You would remember that. Sometimes he researches poisons that grow near him.

            “It’s remarkable, isn’t it? All the stupid things he has no reason to be afraid of. The nights he spent looking up scarification, blood loss, scaphism, crucifixion, deadly spiders, hate crime statistics, none of them would ever hurt him. But him knowing that, and me being in his head… any of it can hurt you.

            “I know everything Pete does. But I know how to put it to good use.”

            Patrick made no outward response. It didn’t seem to require one.

            “The pack bond.”

            “Proud of that too,” Not-Pete said. “It was a relatively simple charm. Your band figured it out eventually. Joe can feel you now, which I imagine is about to be pretty traumatizing for him.”

            “Because?”

            “Because I’m going to kill you,” Not-Pete said, calmly and sweetly as saying ‘I love you.’ Patrick had expected it, but he still shuddered.

            “Why?” Patrick asked. His breathing felt more labored, but he couldn’t tell if it was noticeable, he had already been struggling so much to get air into his body.

            “For the same reason we’re doing all of this,” Not-Pete said. “We want to make Pete hurt.”

            “Pete?” Patrick looked up for the first time, a sharpness in his voice. “Why Pete?”

            “It’s all about Pete,” Not-Pete laughed. “And what would ruin him more than ruining you? Pretty little golden ticket, his golden boy, true blue, the man with the voice, Rick, Rickster, his soulmate. He thinks the sun rises and sets on you, but you’re the chink in his armor. His big, human vulnerability.”

            “You could’ve just killed me,” Patrick said. He wished it sounded angry, defiant, but his voice was almost a whine. Like he was asking, ‘Why didn’t you?’

            “No,” Not-Pete said. “I want him to find your mangled corpse and really, truly know how much you _suffered_ ,” he hissed the last word, his face uncomfortably close to Patrick’s with no room for Patrick to pull away.

            Not-Pete drew back, his face flattening out again, impassive once more.

            “I wanted to give you one more parting gift before we finished,” he said. “A little reminder for Pete.”

            He cut Patrick’s ropes with his knife and flipped Patrick over. Patrick didn’t try to escape, though it was only him against Not-Pete. His ankle was broken, his hand was a bloody mess, and he was too tired to try again. They had replaced the light bulb, he realized dully, at some point while he was out.

            “This word is from me,” Not-Pete said. “No need to point the blame anywhere else.”

            Patrick heard the whirring, electrical noise before he felt the pain between his shoulder blades. He had no idea what the source of this awful tearing pain was, couldn’t focus on it. He wasn’t going to be able to guess whatever the word was either. He just shuddered as he felt new lines of pain flare across his back.

            “Do you know what this one says?” Not-Pete asked. He stroked the wound with his forefinger, making Patrick wince. He leaned in and whispered before Patrick could even guess.

            “It says ‘Mine.’”

            Patrick trembled. He waited for the monster to turn him onto his back again, and he did.

            “Why?” Patrick asked.

            “I want them to know who you belong to,” Not-Pete said. Patrick glared, but didn’t lash out.

            “I don’t belong to anyone,” he said. Not-Pete snorted.

            “Oh, really? What with the scars from your vampire,” he dug his nails into Patrick’s neck where Andy had first drank from him so long ago, and Patrick gasped, “The scent of your werewolf,” he inhaled Patrick’s hair, and Patrick turned his head to the side, “The constant, draping arm of your fae? It’s clear to the whole magical world who you belong to.”

            Patrick didn’t say anything. He felt his blood oozing out from the fresh cut on his back, and tried to control his breathing.

            The door opened again and the rest of the egrigors entered.

            “So, Patrick, are you ready?” Not-Pete asked. He leaned over and kissed Patrick. Unable to pull away, Patrick could only whine in protest into Not-Pete’s mouth.

            “You can do the honors,” he heard Pete say, and Patrick closed his eyes. Maybe there was honor, like it said in all the movies, all the stories of old heroes, in dying with your eyes open, but Patrick didn’t care. He didn’t want the last thing he saw to be one of these creatures. He didn’t want to look into empty black eyes while he died. He kept his eyes firmly shut and he thought about Pete. His Pete.

            “It doesn’t have to be over,” Not-Patrick said. “You could beg for your life. See what happens.”

            “No,” Patrick said. He kept his eyes shut. “I’d rather die than beg you.”

            “Have it your way.”

            He thought about his mom and dad and his dog and Pete’s warm, amber eyes, thought about cats and playing on live TV and being in the recording studio and tried to will himself to be anywhere but there.

            “Got it,” someone said. They inhaled deeply, and Patrick didn’t open his eyes. He thought about Joe and Andy and slaying a dragon and saving the world and Pete.

            He heard the sudden rush of air as a knife was brought down through the air. Patrick tensed and thought of Pete.

            And nothing touched him.

            Curiosity overcame his resolve to die with his eyes closed. Patrick opened his eyes.

            Not-Patrick was holding the knife just over Patrick’s neck, and his face had contorted into confusion and frustration.

            “What are you doing?” Not-Joe demanded.

            “It won’t- go down-!” Not-Patrick said.

            “Quit dragging this out and just kill him,” Not-Joe growled. He snatched the knife from Not-Patrick, made to slash across Patrick’s throat, and the knife jumped up as soon as it came near his neck, determined to skip it.

            “What?” Not-Pete asked.

            “We can’t kill them?” Not-Joe said. “We can’t fucking kill them.”

            “All of them, or just him?” Not-Patrick said. “I’ll be back.”

            Patrick was lost, looking around in confusion. Not-Patrick vanished into thin air, and Patrick tried to sit up, only to be shoved back down.

            “What’s happening?” Patrick croaked.

            “An experiment,” Not-Pete said. “Shut up.”

            Not-Patrick popped back into the room, looking livid.

            “I tried Andy,” he said. “It didn’t work. They can’t fucking die.”

            “They can die,” Not-Joe said. “We just can’t kill them.”

            Patrick glanced between the four of them for a second, and then he snorted. All of them stared at him. In spite of how bad it hurt to do so, Patrick started laughing, the first smile in so long lighting up his face.

            “You- can’t- kill us?!” he cackled. It wasn’t even that funny, he thought, but the thought was somehow hilarious. Patrick curled in on himself, laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.

            “Shut up, sweetie,” Not-Pete said, his voice sickly sweet. Patrick shook his head, still shaking with silent laughter.

            “All this shit- and you can’t kill us!” he laughed, almost hysterical.

            “I said, SHUT UP!” Not-Pete screamed. He tried to plunge the knife into Patrick’s chest, but it bounced back before it even got close to touching his skin.

            Patrick looked up at Not-Pete, positively full of mirth.

            “Don’t worry,” he said, hiccupping slightly. “Happens to everyone. I hear performance issues are common in men your age.”

            Not-Pete screamed. He threw the knife to the side and started hitting Patrick with his bare hands, slapping and punching him into the table like a piece of raw meat. And as much as it hurt, Patrick did not stop laughing at them.

            Not-Pete finally shoved his head against the metal table, cutting off Patrick’s giggling. He turned and looked up at Not-Patrick, coughed a little to make sure he would be able to speak clearly. He met his counterpart’s livid black eyes.

            “I win,” he said savagely. For the second time that day, he drifted into unconsciousness.

***

            Joe was having a marginally better day than Patrick. It was still fucking terrible.

            He paced the room back and forth, trying to think around the alerts going off in his brain. Once Pete had crushed that stupid fucking stone (Joe tried not to think too much about it, because if he thought about it, then he thought that the anger and shame might cause him to spontaneously combust) he could feel Patrick again, and he felt everything. It wasn’t, obviously, as strong as experiencing it firsthand. But it was like his brain kept trying to alert him to the problem with his packmate, nagging at him with sharp reminders that felt like cuts and burns and waves of nausea. As if it wasn’t already crystal clear that something was horribly wrong.

            “Okay,” Joe said. He stopped in front of the door. “Okay, the first step is to get out of here.”

            “Do you have a plan for that?” Pete asked. Joe couldn’t decipher the emotion in his voice, couldn’t tell if Pete was desperate or numb or furious, and he didn’t bother trying to figure it out. They didn’t have the time to worry about specifics.

            “No,” Joe said. “Or, not a good one. But I think we can break this door down.”

            He didn’t think they could break the door down, but it was their only exit. They had to get through the door no matter what, if only because getting past that door was all Joe could think about. He moved to the far side of the room, then ran at the door at top speed. He slammed into it, but the only result he got was a throbbing shoulder.

            Joe felt a spike of pain from Patrick, and he hit the door again, hoping that he might have knocked it loose on the first hit. It didn’t even budge.

            “Do you have a better plan?” Andy asked.

            Joe closed his eyes, slammed his shoulder into the door again. Going by the sound that the door made when he hit it and its durability, Joe figured it was probably made of metal. What did a concert venue need with an armored room?

            All he could focus on was getting out, was helping. Intense pain shot up his wrist, and he grabbed it reflexively before realizing it wasn’t his wrist that hurt, but someone else’s. Patrick’s. He gritted his teeth and kicked one of the walls to test his theory. When his foot bounced back with the same dull clang, he nodded.

            “Okay, Pete, call someone,” Joe said. “Anyone who’s in Chile with us. Andy, you and I are going to try and break the door down in the meantime.”

            “Why would it work any better with both of us trying?” Andy asked.

            “Doors are weakest by the handle, right?” Joe said. “So we’ll just keep trying to kick it in and eventually we’ll -shit!- weaken it.”

            Joe held his wrist up against his chest. He tried to block out Patrick, to not feel the sudden thrill of fear run through his head, but with little else to focus on, his packmate was automatically taking up a lot of his mind’s attention.

            Pete turned away as he held the phone up to his ear, muttering under his breath in a low voice. It didn’t sound like he was on the phone with anyone yet. Joe could feel panic emanating from Pete, but as horrible as it sounded even to himself, he didn’t want to deal with it right now. He couldn’t deal with it yet, he reasoned. Not until they got Patrick to safety somewhere.

            (A more negative part of his mind wondered just how he intended to do that. How did he intend to escape from the omniscient and all-powerful creatures that could one-up them at every step? After just disarming and trapping the band this easily, surely anything else they tried would be the same. But Joe didn’t want to think about that.)

            He kicked at the door, just under the knob, and thought that maybe, just maybe, the door shook a little. He stepped back, let Andy do the same, and the two of them took turns. Together they kicked at the door, and although Joe didn’t know if it was having any effect on the metal, it felt better to be doing something, anything.

            “Yeah, no, we didn’t,” Pete didn’t sound good, but Joe was focused on the door and the fear emanating from Patrick. “We’re locked in a room in the venue, can you-? I don’t know where, please, you’ve got to try. Yeah? Thanks.”

            Suddenly, a new emotion came from Patrick, one that didn’t make sense. He felt elated. Joe pulled back for a second and tried to focus on it. He usually got nothing more than a general sense of emotions, or sometimes felt matching pain when someone was especially injured. He wanted to know why Patrick could be happy in this situation, but he couldn’t focus.

            He and Andy kept kicking and shoving at the door, but all their work hadn’t even produced a little bit of give.  Joe sat down on the ground, breathing heavily and trying to think.

            “Diaz is coming,” Pete said. “He’ll be able to get us out. Do you know where Patrick-?”

            “No,” Joe said, unable to keep the misery out of his voice. “I don’t know anything useful. All I can tell is how he _feels_ right now, and that’s gonna do fuck-all for us trying to find him. He’s been better the past few minutes, but I can’t tell why that-”

            Joe gasped, cutting himself off. All of the good feelings from Patrick evaporated immediately and were soon replaced with pain racing through his ankle. Joe hissed and bent over, grabbing his own ankle.

            “What is it? What’s wrong?” Pete asked. He was frantic, and Joe knew he ought to feel sympathetic, but he mostly just felt annoyed with him.

            “I. Don’t. Know,” he said. “It just fucking hurts! He’s hurt, he’s been hurt, he’s going to keep being hurt unless we get out of here!”

            “We’re trying,” Andy said. He meant it to be soothing, Joe thought, but it was too frantic to do any good. They didn’t need to soothe each other, in any case. They needed a solution.

            “This fucking door just needs to-” Joe stood up and threw himself at it again. He twisted the knob until it snapped under his hands.

            “Will that lock us in?” Pete asked.

            “I don’t know!” Joe shouted. He hit the empty space where the knob had been, but nothing had changed.

            An hour passed like that. They couldn’t speak to each other without shouting, and while Joe and Andy and even Pete tried on occasion to hit the door, break it down, nothing changed.

            Joe could still feel Patrick. He was torn between whether or not he wanted to be feeling Patrick. On the one hand, he wanted to keep tabs on him, know how he was holding up. On the other hand, he didn’t want to feel this anymore. He didn’t want the terror and agony in the back of his head, distracting him from thinking of a plan to get out. And, selfishly, he just didn’t want to feel this, this borrowed pain.

            After too much time had passed fruitlessly, Joe felt a change through the bond. Pete was pacing like a caged animal, the well-battered door still hadn’t budged, and even Andy looked a few steps beyond frazzled when Joe felt it. Despair flared up into something else, an emotion he didn’t quite recognize but Joe was certain it was bad. A combination of resignation and terror. Joe could only describe the emotion as waiting to die. Joe tensed up, but there was nothing he could do. That, he thought, was the worst thing of all.

            Joe leaned against the wall, waiting as the horrible sensation of loss washed over him. He could feel it in his chest, Patrick’s absolute certainty of his own death. And Joe was frozen there, terrified of what he was about to feel, but then something changed again.

            It wasn’t happiness, not exactly. The pain didn’t lessen, but the emotion attached to it was odd. A new kind of apprehension.

            “Something’s happening,” Joe said. He jumped to his feet. He didn’t have a weapon, but he still had time to transform, shedding his clothes and tensing his muscles, the fur on his back raising.

            Not-Patrick appeared in front of them where one moment there had been nothing but empty space. The cuffs of his shirt were stained red, and he had a noticeable puckered pink scar on his neck - one that Joe didn’t remember seeing before. He was plainly furious.

            “I’m sorry to do this so suddenly,” he said. “But I have to test something.”

            He turned away from Joe, which was a mistake. Joe launched at him teeth first. He had every intention of clamping his jaws around the creature’s bare neck, but he was shoved aside before he got within a foot of his target.

            “Not you, Joe,” he said.

            Pete screamed and ran at the creature as well, but he was also thrown out of the way. Like it wasn’t even an effort. The monster strolled up to Andy, almost lazily.

            “I am deeply sorry about this,” he said. He drew Patrick’s knife out of a sheath and grabbed Andy by the hair. Joe saw the imminent trajectory of the knife and didn’t even have time to howl before the thing ripped the knife across Andy’s throat.

            A beat passed, and Andy staggered backwards, clutching his completely unharmed neck.

            “Bastard,” Not-Patrick whispered. He spun and threw the knife at Joe, too fast for him to dodge. It was heading straight for his chest, but it changed course at the last moment, burying himself in Joe’s front leg instead, sending his eyes wide with pain and shock.

            “Wait here,” Not-Patrick growled. He disappeared again.

            The room was silent for a moment. Joe turned back, pulled his jeans on with his uninjured arm, and then looked at the knife still lodged in his other arm.

            “What was that?” Pete asked. “What the fuck was that?”

            “A test,” Joe said through gritted teeth. “A failed one, I think.”

            “What does it mean?” Pete pleaded. Joe ripped the knife out of his arm, and Andy groaned in sympathy next to him. The stab did hurt, but the wound was absurdly shallow. He pressed his other hand against the wound, putting as much pressure on it as he could.

            “I don’t know,” Joe said. “But I think…” he paused. He didn’t want to scare Pete any more, but he didn’t want to risk him being in the dark when it might help. “I think it means they tried to kill Patrick, but he couldn’t.”

            As expected, Pete looked terrified, pale enough to be a ghost. Joe thought he might fall over, so he reached out to hold him up with his blood-slick hand.

            “Pete, he couldn’t. Patrick’s alive! He’s not going to die.”

            Joe couldn’t really give Patrick a better endorsement than “alive,” but he could give him that much. Pete’s breathing eased up ever so slightly.

            “Your fucking arm, Joe,” Andy said. He tore the sleeve off his own shirt and tied it around the top of Joe’s arm. Joe winced.

            “I don’t need a tourniquet,” he muttered.

            Andy shook his head. Pete picked the knife up off the ground and wiped the blade on his jeans, looking faint the whole time.

            “Patrick’s,” Pete said. “He’ll want it.” Joe nodded.

            The egrigors materialized in the room and Joe backed up against the wall. Pete brandished Patrick’s knife, and the egrigors just laughed at him. It wasn’t an enthusiastic laugh, Joe couldn’t help but notice. Something in their faces looked harder, angrier than before.

            “Where is he?” Pete shouted.

            “Up in your hotel room,” Not-Pete said. “Unconscious, but breathing.”

            Pete made to run for the door, but the egrigors pushed him back forcibly, knocking Pete into Joe and Andy.

            “Not so fast,” Not-Joe said. “We have business to discuss first.”

            “Let us **_go_** ,” Pete said, the room flashing with gold light for a second. The egrigors were unfazed.

            “The concert tonight,” Not-Joe said. “It’s too late for you to cancel, you’ve been stuck in here. Do you want us to play…?”

            “Or would you three rather go on with me?” Not-Patrick asked.

            “I don’t think anyone will buy you as Patrick,” Joe said mildly, fighting back the urge to charge at them like Pete had.

            “Really?” Not-Patrick asked. He shrunk down, making himself look nearly identical to Patrick, and held up a contact lens case. “Sclera lenses. Won’t hold up to close scrutiny, but from a distance…”

            “Where did you get that?” Joe asked.

            “Keep better track of your credit cards,” Not-Patrick said. “Me, or us?”

            Joe took one look at Pete before realizing this wasn’t a decision at all.

            “Do what you want,” he said. “Just let us out of here.”

            Not-Patrick got his fingertips around the edges of the door and ripped it off its frame. He gestured out into the hall, and maybe started to say something else, but Joe never heard it. The three of them were sprinting.

            Andy was the fastest, so it made sense that he got back into the hotel lobby way before them. He held the elevator door for the other two, though Joe could see the impatience plain on his face.

            The elevator ride itself was agony. It moved upwards too slowly, and the silence was deafening. With his heightened senses, he could hear the crowd across the street cheering, and felt sick at his stomach at the thought of those _things_ performing in their place.

            Andy was the first down the hall, and he paused in front of the hotel room door and shivered.

            “What?” Joe demanded. “Is something wrong?”

            “I can just,” Andy swallowed. “Smell the blood.”

            Joe didn’t stop to think about that. He dug in his pocket for his hotel key. He fumbled a few times before he got it inserted, but finally threw open the door to a dark hotel room. The front room appeared to be empty. Joe bent his knees, half-crouched as he stepped forward.

            “Stay on guard,” he said. “This could be another trap.”

            He doubted it was, though. He could smell the blood now too. He couldn’t distinguish it from anyone else’s blood like Andy could, but the room still smelled heavy with it and not much else. He took a cautious step forward, scanning the room. While he looked around, Pete shoved past him, knife hanging limp at his side as he ran for the bedroom.

            “Pete!” Joe cried, and he ran after him.

            The lights were still off when Joe got in. Pete was bent over the bed murmuring softly under his breath, the knife abandoned on the floor.

            “I’m gonna get the light, okay?” Joe said. No one made any protest, so he flipped the switch.

            Before the light was turned on, Joe had seen the dark bloodstains on the white hotel sheets, and the strange angles on the figure Pete was bent over. But the light threw him into great relief, because when Joe stepped forward, he could see Patrick properly.

            The image looked reversed, somehow. Joe could easily picture how this would look the other way around, with Patrick stoic and solid and holding Pete to his chest. But here, Patrick was pressed up against Pete so Joe couldn’t see his face. What he could see of him was mangled. He couldn’t make out the injuries, distorted under a smeary layer of blood, but there had to be a lot of them to cover him so thoroughly.

            Pete, while Joe stared, grabbed the edge of the blanket on the far side of the bed and wrapped it around Patrick’s shoulders. Patrick pushed back a little and made a face at Pete.

            “Stop, stop’t,” his words came out thick and slurred. “’m’fine.”

            Pete winced. He lifted his hand to run it through Patrick’s hair and Patrick flinched away, then made a pained noise.

            “Stop, stop, stop,” he said. Pete leaned back. His face didn’t look too bad-- bruised, but not like his jaw was broken or nose was cut off or anything horrible like that. He kept his face scrunched up, but Joe couldn’t see any obvious injuries.

            “Baby,” Pete said, but Patrick shook his head again. His eyes were shut.

            “Eyes?” he said quietly after a minute. He opened his own eyes, and stared into Pete’s for a moment before he let out a slow breath. He turned to Joe and Andy hovering in the doorway, and Joe widened his eyes so Patrick could see the whites.

            “Right,” Patrick said. He sounded terrible. “Sorry. I’ve, uh,” he cleared his throat, but it did nothing to make his voice sound better, “Bad day. How’ve you been?”

            “Not great,” Joe said. “Jesus fuck, dude.”

            Joe sat on the edge of the bed and wrapped his arms gingerly around Patrick as well but pulled back when Patrick hissed in pain.

            “Shit, sorry,” Joe said. “Where does it-? I mean where are you-?”

            “Everywhere,” Patrick said, then shuddered. “Um. God, I don’t. Water?”

            Andy handed him a glass of water with alarming speed, and Patrick drained it almost as quickly.

            “We should get you to a hospital,” Joe said.

            “No!” Patrick shouted. Joe startled, and Patrick shrank back, away from Pete and the rest of them, his face still twisted in pain.

            “Your ankle, though,” Joe said. “It’s broken, isn’t it?”

            “It is,” Patrick said. His eyes were watering with pain, and he fell back onto his elbows, unable to stay propped up.

            “Stop, stop moving, you’re making it worse,” Joe said. Patrick’s breathing was short, and Joe could feel the pain radiating off him.

            “You can’t, we can’t do doctors right now, fuck, Jesus, dammit,” Patrick made a pained noise, but pulled back yet again when Pete reached for him. “We need- we need… do you know?”

            “Know what?” Joe asked.

            “They can’t kill us,” Patrick said, his breathing labored.

            “Yeah, we know,” Joe said.

            “And we can’t kill them,” Patrick said. At that, Joe froze.

            “What do you mean?” he asked. Patrick met his eyes, and Joe couldn’t help but think that his eyes didn’t look the same as they had that morning. There was no physical difference, but he didn’t look like the same Patrick somehow.

            “I killed mine,” Patrick said. “He came back.”

            Patrick shuddered, falling all the way onto his back. This movement seemed to make him worse, as he let out another stifled cry.

            “We have to go to a hospital,” Joe insisted.

            “Yeah? And how do you- explain-?”

            Frustrated at his difficulty in getting the full sentences out, Patrick stopped. He lay there, breathing shallow, and Joe walked over to the other side of the bed. He leaned down and started to lift Patrick up.

            “STOP!” both Patrick and Pete shouted at the same time, varying degrees of panic in their voices. Patrick twisted out of Joe’s arms and started scraping at the blood on his collarbone.

            “Patrick, **stop** ,” Joe demanded. His voice slipped into alpha, and Patrick froze, looking up at Joe in disbelief.

            “I’m trying to show you,” he said. The fear, clear in his voice, made Joe’s stomach twist. Patrick was afraid of _him_.

            Worse than that realization, though, was looking down at Patrick’s skin. He had been rubbing the blood away from a cut, and not just any cut, but a word that had been carved onto his body. The injuries all over his skin, the cuts and burns Joe could feel echoes of, they were all words.

            “Oh my God,” Andy said, his voice so quiet that Joe doubted if anyone else heard it.

            “Ferrum,” Patrick said at last, his hand still frozen in place above his collar. “I know she’s not- fuck, we’re in the wrong fucking _hemisphere_ , but- maybe she knows someone or- or we can just clean it up until we get back, or- can I move again?”

            For the first time since they got in, Patrick sounded like he was going to cry.

            “Yes, god, sorry,” Joe said. Patrick went limp again. There was no accusation in Patrick’s voice or his face, but Joe could feel it deep within himself. He didn’t know if it came from him or Patrick or Pete or Andy, but he could feel the thought echoing in his brain, the constant repetition of ‘Your fault, your fault, your fault.’

            “You need a doctor for your ankle at least,” Pete said. His voice was quiet, almost as wrecked as Patrick’s. Patrick didn’t look at him.

            “They can forget they ever saw you,” Pete said. At this Patrick nodded slowly.

            “I’ll go call someone,” Andy said, his voice very quiet as he withdrew from the back room.

            “If I make him forget everything, do you want a doctor to clean you up, or-?”

            “No,” Patrick said. His eyes flitted to Joe, and then Pete. “No, you can help.”

            Joe needed to leave, he realized. The egrigors hadn’t exactly provided Patrick with a hospital gown or anything. Still, he lingered in the doorway before he left.

            “Do you need help with, um, anything?” he asked.

            Pete shook his head, and Joe stepped away.

            Joe sat down in the main room. He had blood on the palms of his hands. Patrick was alive, yes, but Joe felt unbearably hollow.

            The good thing about getting out of that room was that he couldn’t see Patrick anymore, good news for both his and Patrick’s sanity. The bad thing was that he could still hear him and Pete with perfect clarity. He heard their struggle to get Patrick into the bathroom, the muffled moans of pain of maneuvering into the tub. He listened intently to just in case they needed any help, or just in anticipation before something went wrong enough for them to call for him. Then, the shower turned on and the noises from the bathroom grew very loud and agonized, one step away from screaming. Joe jolted forward, like he was going to sprint in, but he held himself still. The almost-screams coming through the wall grated against his ears, but he listened anyway. _“God I’m sorry baby are you-” “It’s fine it’s fucking fine it just BURNS” “I’m sorry” “It hurts!”_

            “Hey.”

            Joe spun around, and Andy was staring at him.

            “Hey,” Joe said blankly. Andy tugged at his arm.

            “Your hands,” he said. Joe looked down. He had dug the blunt edges of his nails hard enough into the palms of his hands that they had made four tiny crescent moon cuts of their own, barely visible through the blood that was already drying on his skin.

            Joe unclenched his hands. Andy wasn’t the type to hover and demand that Joe talk about his emotions. He would be there if Joe wanted to do so, but he wouldn’t make him. That was good, because Joe didn’t want to talk.

            “Doctor’s on his way,” Andy said. “And I ordered some food from a restaurant downtown. If he can, he should eat something.”

            Joe had never felt so thoroughly defeated. At every possible angle, he’d been thwarted. Everything that could go wrong had. And they’d lost, twice in a row. Andy, at least, was doing something to help.

            His brooding thoughts were interrupted by Pete’s phone ringing. He checked it, saw Ashlee’s name, and threw it back down onto the sofa.

            “Thanks,” Joe told Andy tonelessly. “That’s. It’s great. He’s probably hungry.”

            “Hard to find delivery with a lot of iron in it, but we can go out and buy supplements or something tomorrow. Lot of blood loss. Don’t want him to go into shock or anything.”

            Andy sat down on the couch, looking uncomfortable, but Joe stayed standing. He could still hear the distressed sounds of the others coming from the bathroom.

            “The other guys,” Joe said eventually. “Where did they go?”

            “I told them we were up here,” Andy said. “They should be up eventually.”

            Pete’s phone rang again, still Ashlee. The rest of their crew came into the hotel room, and Andy explained in hushed tones why their lead singer was screaming in the bathroom and how the band was seemingly in two places at once. When the food came, they laid it out in the hotel kitchenette. When the doctor finally arrived, Joe walked back into the room and knocked on the door of the bathroom.

            “What is it?” Pete asked from behind the closed door.

            “Doctor’s here,” Joe said. “Are you guys…?” He wasn’t sure how to finish the question.

            “Give us a hand?” Pete asked after a moment of silence.

            Joe walked into the bathroom with some trepidation. Pete was standing back, a few feet away from Patrick. He still looked very distant and shaken. Patrick was sitting on the edge of the tub with a towel around his waist, looking simultaneously better and worse than when Joe last saw him. Better in that he was no longer soaked with his own blood, his hair was damp and clean, and that the shower made him look more human, less ravaged. But now that the blood had been washed away, Joe could see all of his injuries properly.

            All of the words stood out on his pale skin, some a raised and sickly white, others clearly puckered cuts that were still slowly oozing blood. Bruises provided a violent red and purple backdrop for the cuts and burns. His ankle was horribly swollen, and there were ragged circles of wounded flesh around his wrists and ankles. Joe glanced over his body, then tried to find someplace else to look. He didn’t want to know what any of the words on Patrick’s skin said.

            “Scary looking, huh?” Patrick said. His voice sounded generally better, but much, much fainter.

            “Gruesome,” Joe agreed in a similarly faint voice. It was almost a joke, and Patrick almost smiled.

            “Help me walk?” Patrick asked, glancing down at his ankle. Right. Joe helped lift Patrick to his feet, and Patrick tried to move forward with little success. Joe lifted Patrick from under his arms a little more, so he could still put his feet on the ground while basically being carried by Joe. This wasn’t an ideal solution, as Joe could feel the strain on some of Patrick’s injuries. But they got him onto the bed, where Patrick collapsed.

            Wordlessly, Joe ran out of the room and up to the doctor. The man was short and severe looking, and didn’t ask any questions as Joe brought him into the bedroom. His eyes widened when he saw Patrick, but he just nodded and started unpacking his bag. Andy had doubtlessly already explained the secrecy and severity of the situation.

            “You can go,” Patrick said. Joe couldn’t help but feel a little rejected, but he nodded, and started towards the door.

            “You can both go,” Patrick said. Joe turned around, but he didn’t have to see Pete to feel his dismay.

            “You shouldn’t be alone,” Pete said. Patrick made a face.

            “You can send someone else in,” he said. “Just not one of… one of you guys. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just… I can’t.”

            “Okay,” Pete said. They were all talking so softly, it would have been hard to hear if he weren’t a werewolf. Together, Joe and Pete walked out of the room. Pete flung himself onto the couch and turned to face away from them. Joe sent Diaz into the back room, just so that there was someone in there with Patrick. It wasn’t like Joe didn’t trust the doctor, not exactly. He honestly wasn’t sure he trusted anyone, not when they could have easily been tricked by the egrigors into doing something they thought Fall Out Boy had asked them to do.

            Joe was trying to listen to Patrick and the doctor in the other room when Pete’s phone started ringing again.

            “Who is it?” Joe asked.

            “Ashlee,” Pete said. He sounded numb.

            “She’s been calling,” Joe said with a frown. “You should get that.”

            The phone eventually stopped ringing.

            Someone shoved a bag of fries under Joe’s nose, and he startled and looked up at Andy.

            “You haven’t eaten all day,” Andy said. He shook the bag.

            “None of us has,” Joe said.

            “My point,” Andy said. Joe made a face but ate anyway, even though the food didn’t really taste like anything.

            “You’re such a dad,” Joe said, and Andy snorted. The spread of fast food on the counter looked impressive and alarming in volume. Joe imagined convincing a traumatized person to eat was probably pretty similar to coaxing a three-year-old into doing the same thing. Lots of options and a firm, fatherly voice.

            Pete’s phone started ringing again. Joe and Andy made eye contact, and Joe cleared his throat.

            “Should you get that?”

            Pete stuck out his arm to grab his phone and brought it back up to his ear.

            “I’m kind of busy, Ash,” he said.

            Joe didn’t mean to eavesdrop, really he didn’t. But he couldn’t help hearing the conversation.

            “ _Yeah, well this is kind of urgent_ ,” Ashlee said. Her voice was barely muffled by the phone’s speaker.

            “Well go ahead, shoot,” Pete said after a moment. Joe knew the kind of stress he was under, but wondered much of his dick attitude was getting across to Ashlee.

            “ _I’m pregnant_ ,” Ashlee said. Pete sat up straight.

            “Um, congrats?” he said. “Who’s the dad?”

            “ _YOU ARE_.” 

            Pete jerked back like the phone bit him. Unable to keep himself from reacting, Joe turned away so that Pete wouldn’t see that he was listening in on the conversation.

            “How pregnant are you?” Pete asked, sounding horrified.

            “ _Only a few weeks_ ,” Ashlee said. “ _I just went to the doctor yesterday and confirmed it. Barely along, but it’s there_.”

            Joe didn’t look at Andy, kept his gaze firmly focused on the floor as his mind raced. If Ashlee was pregnant, barely pregnant in March… He didn’t want to believe Pete would do that. There was no way she was pregnant with his kid unless he had-

            “Then it’s not mine!” Pete shouted. “Why would you think it was? Jesus Christ, we haven’t been together since July!”

            “ _I know!_ ” Ashlee shouted back. “ _But it’s either yours, or there’s some Virgin Mary bullshit going on, because I haven’t slept with anyone since you_.”

            “Maybe you just forgot someone,” Pete said. It might not have been that insulting, were it not for the acidic way he spat it at her.

            “ _Or maybe not everyone sleeps around as much as you do_ ,” Ashlee said.

            “What even makes you think it’s mine?”

            “ _You’re magic, aren’t you? I don’t know everything you and your band get up to, but I know you’re not human. Who knows what that does? How do you know you can’t do this?”_

            Pete didn’t respond to that.

 “ _I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day because I know, okay. I can’t explain how but I’m sure it’s yours. And if you’re not then we can get a test somewhere_.”

            “Are you keeping it, then?” Pete asked. The line was silent for a while.

            “ _That’s why I was calling you_ ,” Ashlee said. “ _I’m not sure… I don’t want an abortion, but I don’t know if I’m ready to… do you want a kid? If it’s yours?_ ”

            The entire room was quiet, so quiet that Joe was sure even the humans in the room could also hear muffled noises coming from the back bedroom, Patrick’s quiet hisses and the doctor’s gentle ministrations.

            “I can’t do this right now, Ash,” Pete said thickly. “I promise I will call you the second I’m back in the states, but I can’t do this right now.”

            He hung up without either of them saying goodbye.

            Andy looked ready to swoop in with his bag of increasingly cold french fries, but Joe held him back. Pete leaned forward, put his face in his hands, and his shoulders started to shake. Joe sat down next to him.

            Pete was crying, and Joe probably should have left him alone. It would have been more tactful, maybe, to act like Pete wasn’t crying, but Joe stayed next to him, just slightly leaning into Pete’s arm.

            “It’s gonna be okay,” Joe murmured. Pete snorted, pulling his hands just slightly away from his face. His crying wasn’t pretty or cinematic, no matter how quiet it was. There was snot trailing down his face and his eyes were red.

            “What about this will be okay?” Pete said. “What the hell is okay? We’re fighting a group of sadists with the power of God who just want to see us suffer! They tortured him for a whole day and we didn’t do _anything_.”

            “We couldn’t,” Joe said. Pete laughed humorlessly.

            “Fucking exactly!” Pete shouted. He pressed back against the couch, looking impossibly small. “We can’t, we can’t do fucking anything. We don’t even know what they want and Patrick-”

            “He’s going to be fine,” Joe insisted. Pete made a noise in the back of his throat that was almost certainly disagreement.

            “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?” he asked. “I can see his aura through the fucking door.”

            “I do, actually,” Joe said. Pete was quiet for a moment.

            “We can’t help him with this,” he said, gesturing at the bedroom door. “We can’t kill these bastards. What are we supposed to do? We’re helpless.”

            “They can’t kill us,” Joe said.

            “How long will we think that’s a good thing?” Pete shot back. Joe didn’t respond, but instead slung his arm around Pete, pulling him in close. Pete really was so small, his whole band was, Joe thought. So small and so easy to scar. Thinking of Patrick’s marked skin still made him want to vomit.

            So, he didn’t think. He held Pete against his chest with his arms wrapped tight around him while Pete cried silently. After a minute, the couch dipped next to him, and Andy shook Pete’s shoulder. Pete’s eyes were painfully red when he looked up.

            Andy shook the greasy paper bag in their faces.

            “Eat,” he said.

            They bullied Pete into eating at least a little. Then, they turned on the TV and sat watching it together. Chilean television, they soon discovered, didn’t have much to offer in hotels if you didn’t speak Spanish.

            Program after program passed, and when the doctor at long last came out, he looked haggard.

            “Your friend is doing well,” he said. “I gave him a sedative, so he won’t be in too much pain tonight, but you’ll need to pick up a prescription for him tomorrow. I already explained this to him, but he said it could be relayed to the rest of you. The boot needs to stay on his leg for the next two months, but he ought to get it checked again as soon as possible. As long as he’s gentle with his wrist, it should heal up all right on its own. As for the bandages, they need to be changed every six hours or so for the first few days, and once a day after that.” The doctor paused and glanced at them.

            “Out of curiosity, how did he sustain these injuries?”

            “ ** _Don’t worry about it_** ,” Pete said from the couch, his eyes glittering a dim gold. “ ** _Forget all the details about us. You don’t know his name. You did your job just fine. You need to get home_**.”

            The doctor looked dazed but nodded.

            “I need to be getting home,” he said, sounding a little confused.

            “Here,” Andy said. He handed the doctor a check, thanked him, and ushered him out the door.

            As if answering Pete’s unspoken plea, Diaz stuck his head out and motioned for Pete to come in. Joe was grateful for Pete’s sake. Pete’s eyes had been wandering back to the door the whole time they sat there.

            Joe was left to mull over the day. He thought over all the times they had made fatal mistakes. He thought about what Pete had said, about how helpless they were. It wasn’t exactly the amazing, relaxing, world record breaking trip they had planned. And, now that he thought about the world record, he wondered what they would do about it. Patrick wasn’t exactly in performing shape, but how picky would the group of scientists in a frozen wasteland be?

            “I hear weather’s bad over Antarctica,” James said. He was so quiet that Joe had nearly forgotten about him. It figured, of all the times to have a fucking reporter hanging around, it would be at a moment like this.

            “You did?” Joe asked.

            “Well, MTV did,” James said. He turned his laptop to face Joe, and Joe had to blink away exhaustion before he read the words on the screen. It was an article about Fall Out Boy, but not the band he had been in that day. The story painted a very different picture, a story about being stuck in a hotel, worrying if the weather would improve. It was very well written.

            “The, uh, weather could get better, you see,” James said, pointing to one of the paragraphs. “Figured I’d see how you guys were feeling tomorrow.”

            “Thank you,” Joe said emphatically. “But why?”

            “Not like anyone would believe the truth,” James said. “If I have to lie anyway, I may as well help you out, right?”

            “Still,” Joe said. “You don’t have to.”

            James shrugged.

            “Already sent it to my editor. I’m gonna get some rest.”

            Joe needed to do the same. They’d all been awake for so long, had such an endlessly long day. But he still wanted to do something, anything to help. Like everyone else already had.

            So the timing of Pete and Patrick’s conversation was good. Joe was just turning off the TV, about to throw the remaining food into the fridge when he heard low voices from the other room.

            “....anything? Food or, I don’t know, your laptop? Anything that would help?”

            “No offense, but unless you can fly my mom or my dog out here tonight….” Patrick sounded as though he were trying to make a joke, but the strain was obvious even in his voice. Joe, however, paused. He had an idea.

            “Andy, maybe stay on the couch tonight,” he said. “Just so you’re closer to us.”

            “Are you not coming back?” Andy asked.

            “Gotta check on something,” he muttered.

            Joe knocked on the door, cleared his throat, and started talking before he could lose his nerve.

            “Hey, um, it’s me. I couldn’t help overhearing and I, ah, had an idea. Can I come in?”

            “Sure,” Patrick said after a long silence.

            Joe eased the door open, blinking at the bright light inside the room, then shifted into a wolf, shedding his clothes at the door. He hopped up onto the bed and sat, panting.

            Pete and Patrick stared at him, and after a second, Patrick laughed.

            “You’re ridiculous,” he said. Joe rolled over, and Patrick rubbed his stomach. Joe’s tongue lolled out of his mouth, and Patrick laughed again.

            “You’re not exactly a Pomeranian,” he said. Joe wriggled closer, and Patrick obligingly curled up with him, one hand tangled in Joe’s fur.

            It wasn’t a good night. Even though the sheets had been changed, the bed still had a lingering scent of blood. Patrick tossed and turned, and Pete didn’t sleep at all. But as Patrick clung to wolf-Joe all through the night, Joe thought that maybe they hadn’t lost completely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooooh, man. Are you pissed at me?  
> Couple of quick end notes: I know what I’m doing with all the Bronx stuff, I promise. I know that probably seemed out of nowhere, but it’s important. Also, I realize this chapter leaves a lot of loose ends, but this season is all more intertwined than I’ve written with the past three.   
> Some interesting tidbits about this chapter: this was, like, the second chapter I ever planned for this story, right after the first one with Patrick discovering what his bandmates were. It’s changed a lot since its inception, but I’ve been setting up for this for ages, so it’s wild finally publishing this! But, more interestingly to the Fall Out Boy fan, 1: it was on this trip to Chile where Ashlee called and told Pete she was pregnant in real life. 2: To the best of my knowledge, this is the crew they brought with them to Chile. Dirty, Charlie, and KTC weren’t there, and James Montgomery was. I poured obsessively over his articles about this trip before writing this, haha. 3: they never did play that show in Antarctica. IRL or in THWTH verse.
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading!   
> Chapter Title by Mindless Self Indulgence


	4. A Hard Day's Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The band discovers some michief going down in Chicago while they are all still trying to recover from recent events pertaining to the egrigors. But they discover that what should be a run of the mill mission has its roots even closer to home than they think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry it took so long! Author's note at the end- I know you really wanna get to the chapter  
> That said: all the usual trigger warnings (blood, swearing, violence, etc) but added warnings for self-harm

            All he could smell was blood. Heavy and cloying and rusty, the air was thick with it. Joe could taste it, salt and iron coating the inside of his mouth, dense velvet on his tongue and the back of his teeth. He could feel it pooling beneath him, congealed and cold at his sides, warm and thin under his back. He kept trying to catch his breath, but each inhale felt like a stab at his chest. His wrists stung from where he had been pulling, the ropes rubbing against his raw skin.

            The monsters were coming back and there was nothing he could do. He was trapped, they were coming, he couldn’t move, and no one was coming to help. His skin burned all over. The door opened and Not-Pete leaned in, his eyes glittering in the dim light of the single bulb of the room, still somehow hungry looking.

            “Hello, Patrick,” he said. “Welcome back.”

            Underneath Not-Pete, he started to scream-

            -and was still screaming as he sat up straight. Joe clutched at his chest, his back, his mouth. Then he let out a shaky breath. It was only a dream, he thought. Just in his head, or no, not even his head. Just in Patrick’s head. It didn’t stop Joe’s heart from hammering wildly in his chest.

            He had woken up before the dream had gotten bad. Patrick’s dreams varied slightly, but this was the most common one. It started with him getting kidnapped again, and ended with- Well, Joe usually woke up long before Patrick did, but he had slept through the end once, and he didn’t want to see it again.

            Marie had stopped waking up to the sound of him crying out in his sleep, but she wasn’t there that time, so it didn’t matter. Joe and Andy were staying at Pete and Patrick’s house, at least for the beginning of recording, but they’d probably stay for the whole process. It wasn’t really safe for any of them to be on their own at the moment, they had decided. Joe and Andy had been let off with the promise that they would stay around other people at all times, and Pete and Patrick tried to do the same. They did their best to keep safe by having a nonstop string of houseguests armed with long range weapons, and nothing had happened yet. (Though Joe got the impression that Pete and Patrick were not especially in the mood to be hosting anyone, given the way Pete talked about the other people in the house.) They were safer in numbers, and safest all together. Theoretically. Joe didn’t bother reminding them how all four of them together couldn’t do anything against the egrigors in the past.

            Still, Joe thought as he stretched, in a house with that many other people living in it, he would have thought someone would have come in to check on him. But he knew Patrick was asleep, and the odds were that Pete had grown numb to the sounds of people shouting in the night as well.

            Joe didn’t want to go back to sleep on the off chance that he would dream with Patrick again. And he wasn’t sure if he should go into the master bedroom and try to shake Patrick awake and out of the nightmare, but he had come to avoid doing that. Patrick hated the fact that they were still sharing dreams, and he had spent weeks trying desperately to sleep as little as possible. Joe wasn’t sure if it was some weird martyr complex wherein Patrick didn’t want them getting hurt, or embarrassment for still being traumatized, but he hated it either way. As such, they had all stopped telling him when they were dreaming about the room and the egrigors, just so he would sleep at all. Unfortunately, that had the side effect of leaving him to sleep through all the nightmares alone.

            Since the two options that would get Joe back to sleep weren’t available, he left his room and wandered into the kitchen. Andy was already there, sitting on the counter and holding an unlabeled red juice box.

            “Is that one of Carm’s juice boxes?” Joe asked. Andy’s eyes flicked to him, and he sucked at the straw. It turned bright right as he drank. That was a yes.

            “They’re convenient,” Andy said. He smiled without showing his teeth. “Bad dreams?”

            The way he said it almost made it sound like a joke.

            “You too?” Joe asked. He slid up onto a stool, heaving a sigh. “Seems like I see them every time I close my eyes.”

            “I know,” Andy said. He frowned over at Joe. “Do you want some tea?”

            Joe shrugged. He didn’t especially want anything, but Andy filled up a kettle anyway. He was exhausted, but then again, he had been exhausted for months. It was June, and he’d spent all spring and a good chunk of summer being tired, shooting nervous glances over his shoulder, and re-learning how to deal with his band.

            None of them knew what to do about the egrigors.

            A part of Joe wondered why this was so bad. He knew they had found Patrick in bad shape, but selfishly, he thought maybe Patrick should be over it. In the nearly three months since they had last seen the egrigors, things had been okay. They’d been quiet and a little nightmare ridden, but they had taken a break from fighting monsters. They had taken things easy, emailing music back and forth while they worked on ideas for the next album, which was already running late. The label was antsy, though their managers did their best to explain the situation.

            Andy set a steaming mug down in front of Joe. It smelled nice, even though he wasn’t really a tea drinker. He dug some milk and sugar out and poured them liberally into the cup until it looked innocuously sweet. Andy rolled his eyes fondly.

            “That’s not even tea anymore,” he said.

            “You,” Joe said. “Are drinking blood out of an upcycled Juicy Juice box.”

            “I am also a vampire,” Andy said. He sighed. “How long do you think we should give it?”

            “I dunno,” Joe said. “Pete’ll wake him if he gets bad, right?”

            “I guess,” Andy said, but he didn’t sound happy about it. “What’s on the agenda tomorrow?”

            “A short break from the studio,” Joe said. “Patrick’s getting the boot thing taken off, and I think he’ll bite my head off if we try to go with them to Ferrum’s, so you and I are free agents in the morning. Recording all afternoon. At least we’re not living at the studio anymore.”

            “Ah, to be twenty one again,” Andy said teasingly. “What do people do for fun in LA?”

            “Drugs,” Joe said. “So nothing for you.”

            “Spectacular,” Andy said. “How long is this album going to take?”

            “Let’s not rush it,” Joe pleaded. “The sooner we finish, the sooner we go back to touring.”

            Andy sighed for a second, then looked off into the middle distance, contemplative.

            “Am I actually getting old, or is all this just getting exhausting?” he asked.

            Joe sipped at the tea. It was actually pretty good.

            “I don’t know,” he said.

            Contrary to Joe’s assessment, Patrick seemed to be in a pretty good mood in the morning. He came downstairs and ate breakfast and laughed and generally seemed reminiscent of himself before the egrigors. If his nightmare had bothered him, he didn’t show it. When he got to bringing up his appointment with Ferrum, he said: “And I assume everyone is tagging along, right?” It was teasing, and only a little bitter. Joe glanced at Andy, and they both shrugged. There was nothing better to do.

            The drive from Pete’s house out to Doctor Ferrum’s was a long one, but it wasn’t horrible. They kept the radio off, because they were on a pretty good streak of not arguing with one another, and someone picking music would kill that pretty fast. As for conversation, there were a lot of banned topics. What happened with the egrigors was out, as was most music outside of the studio. Magic in general was a bit touchy, at the moment. But reminiscing, that was completely fine. They passed the near-hour-long drive in good enough spirits that they were all laughing by the end of it. Joe clung to the moment, because it was all too quickly gone.

            Patrick hardly limped as they walked into the building, and Joe suspected the issue in his gait was more due to the bulky cast rather than the injury itself. The receptionist just waved them straight to the elevator when they came in. Joe and Andy hadn’t come to many of the appointments, but clearly the workers were used to seeing Patrick.

            Joe didn’t know all the finer details about Patrick’s recovery. Pete talked about it, a little. Patrick didn’t talk about it at all. Joe was mostly just aware of how frequently Patrick went to Dr. Ferrum. After they first flew back into LA, Patrick went in a few times a week. At least one of the cuts had gotten infected, and some of the wounds seemed to need slightly more attention than the initial doctor had given them. He imagined there was some physical therapy involved, given the breaks. The rest of the visits… Joe didn’t know.

            Dr. Ferrum seemed pleasantly surprised to see all four of them. She led them all down into an innocuous looking office, far from the operating theater Joe had been in before. Thankfully, she wasn’t the type to make small talk, and as soon as Patrick was sitting on the table, she clasped her hands together, businesslike.

            “All right, Patrick, have you ever had a cast taken off before?”

            “No,” Patrick said.

            “Right, well, this will be quite loud, but it won’t hurt at all.” She pulled out a rather frightening looking electric saw and got to work taking apart the thick cast on Patrick’s leg.

            Patrick stretched out tentatively, and Ferrum laughed a little.

            “Usually people are a bit more excited to get rid of these things,” she said.

            “Oh, I’m plenty excited,” Patrick said, his voice completely deadpan. “At least, I’m excited to wear pants instead of shorts again.”

            “You still ought to come in for a couple of physio sessions, but that’s largely precautionary,” Ferrum said. “Nasty couple of breaks you had there, not much good to say about them, but they were clean. How’s your wrist?”

            “Fine,” Patrick said. “It only hurts when I use it a lot. Or when, you know, it rains.”

            Ferrum made a sympathetic face and jotted something down on a clipboard.

            “Yes, that’s an unfortunate effect. Lucky it was your right hand.”

            “Lucky?” Patrick asked. Ferrum blinked up at him.

            “You play guitar, yes?” she said.

            “There’s not really a convenient wrist to break when you play guitar,” Patrick said. “But I know what you mean.”

            “Any other complications with your injuries?” Ferrum asked. It might have been Joe imagining things, but he thought Patrick glanced to the band at his side before replying.

            “The two, um, deeper wounds, they haven’t closed up yet,” Patrick said.

            “Unfortunate, but I hadn’t really expected that yet,” Ferrum said. “Even if we could have used stitches… well, keep cleaning them regularly, and tell me if they start hurting or looking abnormal. Anything else?”

            Again Patrick looked like he glanced to the side.

            “No,” he said. “Nothing.”

            “Then congratulations, you’re free to go,” Ferrum said. “I’ll have Tristan call you to set up your next appointment.” She paused, her hand half extended as though to grab Patrick’s shoulder. “You seem like you’re healing up quite well.”

            “Thanks,” Patrick said. It was strange, a little awkward as he jumped to his feet, pulling a shoe out of his bag to hop into. He walked around the office once, then shook her hand.

            “Thanks,” he said again, and led the four of them out.

            The mood amongst all four of them was shockingly exuberant, Joe noted. He could feel the happiness throughout his pack mates, boosting his already good mood. When Patrick unexpectedly suggested that they stay out for a bit and not go back to the studio right away, they were all a little too eager to accept. Patrick looked down and bit back a smile.

            “Have I been that bad?” he asked, only mostly joking.

            “Oh, Patrick,” Joe adopted a serious, syrupy voice, and put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. For a moment, Patrick looked terrified that Joe was about to make a sappy speech. “You’ve always been absolutely fucking exhausting.”

            Patrick laughed, and everyone joined in. He could walk again, even if it wasn’t super well. It was slow going, and Patrick definitely favored his right leg, but they could do it.

            They didn’t go far, just down the block to the trendy frozen yogurt place (that was admittedly not so trendy anymore) that the Backstreet Boys had taken them to the last time Joe had been to Ferrum’s office. Joe wasn’t actually all that hungry, but he filled his cup with everything that looked pink and sugary and bad for him.

            The one good thing that had come of all this, Joe thought to himself as they ate, was the rest they were all getting. Although, he strongly suspected that the respite was about to end.

            “So, I’ve been hearing weird stuff about Chicago,” Andy said. Patrick paused, tiny plastic spoon still hanging out of his mouth.

            “Weird stuff?” he repeated.

            “Kids are going missing,” Andy said. “Or, okay, not kids, but teenagers. Young people our age.”

            “Kids,” Pete agreed. “Go on.”

            “And also vampires,” Andy said. “Vampires are going missing. Could be something.”

            “Gang activity?” Joe suggested.

            “Specist,” Andy said. “But maybe. Just thought it might be interesting. Mom’s scared if I go there I’ll get kidnapped by vampire hunters or something.”

            “I can ask KTC to look into it,” Pete said. Patrick yawned and stretched.

            “I could go for a vampire fight,” he said. “We haven’t done anything for months. I’m sure the magic community thinks somebody finally finished us off.”

            “Right, because we’re not famous and vampires can’t use computers, I forgot,” Joe said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “How ‘bout we wait till the threat gets a little more defined before we charge into Chicago, stakes-a-blazing?”

            “Obviously, but,” Patrick paused. “It’d be nice to have some monsters we can defeat for once.”

            They were dangerously close to talking about multiple forbidden topics, the egrigors being the largest of those. The big, scary, unbeatable monsters.

            “We can look into it,” Pete repeated. “And in the meantime, we can be grateful that there’s no, like, octopus demon trying to take over the world.”

            He paused.

            “You guys haven’t heard anything about an octopus demon trying to take over the world, right?” he asked.

            “I am sure you’d be the first to know, sweetie,” Patrick said. He leaned a little closer, his arm resting right against Pete’s.

            “Do you guys remember the rule about being cute while I’m eating?” Joe asked.

            “No,” Patrick said. He slowly but deliberately turned his head up to kiss Pete. Patrick made it seem simple, but the look of surprise on Pete’s face indicated to Joe that it was a bigger deal than he made it seem.

            “Disgusting,” Joe said, but without any heart behind it. They were all treading lightly. They were all being a little extra careful around one another, but it was the best option they had. The kind of forced normalcy that felt like it could be real again if they kept pretending hard enough.

            Joe stood up from the table and went to the bathroom. He could still feel the weird cloud of happiness amongst all of them as he walked away. Tentative happiness, but they were all chasing it. It was hopeful, he thought.

            He was just zipping up at the fucking urinal when he heard the voice behind him.

            “Hey there, puppy. Did you think you were off the hook?”

            It was his own voice.

            Joe spun around to see not just his counterpart, but all four of the egrigors staring back at him with hungry, shiny, black eyes. Joe was torn between running, screaming, or fighting, but instead, all he could do was stare. He couldn’t move at all.

            Not-Patrick grabbed Joe’s collar and dragged him forward. Joe’s feet scraped across the floor as the egrigor pulled him. He might as well have been a ragdoll; all he did was stare up at the Patrick egrigor, paralyzed by the sight of him. He was numb, unmoving, couldn’t make a sound because all the spit in his mouth had dried up and evaporated.

            “Wow, we’ve really got a live one here, huh?” Not-Patrick said. He yanked Joe up until the two of them were eye level. “What are you afraid of, Joe?”

            His breath was cold on Joe’s face, his face expressionless. And Joe was going to end up just like Patrick, covered in his own scars and waking up with his own nightmares.

            Strength flooded back into Joe, and he kicked out at Not-Patrick, drawing in breath for a shout that would knock the whole fucking restaurant to the ground.

            But before he could make a sound, Not-Joe clamped a hand over his mouth and Not-Patrick gripped him by the wrists. Joe flailed in their grasp, but his struggles were silent, and Not-Patrick withstood every kick like he was made of stone.

            “Get the door,” Not-Joe said. One of the egrigors walked across the bathroom, while while Joe was still being held to face Not-Patrick. He whined against the hand on his mouth, tugged at his wrists, but none of it did any good.

            “Feels pretty helpless, doesn’t it?” Not-Patrick said. He held both of Joe’s wrists in one hand and stroked Joe’s cheek with his other hand. Joe shuddered, but someone else was holding him still from behind. God, there were too many of them, too many hands, too much to fight back against.

            “How much damage do you think we could do before they come in?” Not-Patrick asked. “I’ve been wondering what our limits are. Could we break your spine in half? Smash your nose and tilt your head back until you choke on your own blood?”

            He scratched Joe’s face with the edges of his nails, so hard Joe felt a trickle of blood run down his face. He trailed his hand down and hooked his fingers in one of the belt loops on Joe’s jeans, then pulled. His mouth was twisted into a half-smile.

            “Neuter you like a stray?”

            Joe thrashed in their grasp until he heard all four of them laughing. He felt a wetness on his face that had nothing to do with blood, and he heard his heartbeat all around him like a roar. This couldn’t be happening, couldn’t be happening, the others were right outside the door.

            “Patrick, be nice,” Not-Joe said from behind Joe. “Don’t worry. We’re not going to do anything today. We just wanted to give you a message.”

            Not-Pete’s voice was right in Joe’s ear, too close, too loud.

            “You’re next, dog.”

            The arms holding him were suddenly gone, and Joe fell onto the dirty tile of the bathroom floor, boneless. His breath came in short bursts as he sat there. It wasn’t exactly comfortable on the ground, his legs sprawled out underneath him, but he didn’t feel up to standing just yet.

            Joe wasn’t sure how long he sat there, just breathing, but it must have been quite a while. By the time he managed to stand up and wash his hands, the bathroom door opened and Andy walked in behind him.

            “Dude?” Andy said. Joe flinched at the noise coming from behind, and he spun around again.

            He had caught sight of himself in the mirror, so he knew what Andy must have seen. Tear-streaked face, blood running down his cheek, panic in his eyes, rumpled shirt. It was obvious. But the automatic recognition and resigned sadness in Andy’s face made it worse.

            “Are you okay?” he asked. Joe shook his head a little, and Andy rested a hand on his shoulder.

            “It’ll be alright,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

            Pete and Patrick must have joined them on their way out. Joe felt fuzzy as they left. He was still vibrating with fear, and for no good reason. They hadn’t actually done anything, he tried to remind himself. Nothing had happened.

            He didn’t want to be like Patrick.

            No, but he wasn’t going to think that, because that was a horrible thing to think. Patrick was fine. He wasn’t broken or pitiable. What had happened to Patrick wasn’t the end of the world. Joe sure as shit wasn’t glad it had happened to Patrick rather than him, except sometimes he was.

            Joe was going to hell. On his own, or the egrigors were going to drag him there.

            “Hey,” Patrick’s voice made him flinch, even as soft and low as it was. “Are you okay?”

            “They didn’t do anything,” Joe said. Patrick grimaced.

            “They don’t have to do anything physical,” he said. Joe nodded, so fast it was almost a tremor.

            When the four of them were back in Pete and Patrick’s house, Joe felt a little better. The overly trendy living room, the pervasive smell of dogs and boys and Gucci cologne, the guitars everywhere: it was all familiar territory. It felt safer inside, like a home base, though yet again Joe knew that it was impossible for any place to be truly safe.

            “What did they do?” Pete asked. His face was swimming before Joe, and what Joe hated the most about all this was that it wasn’t his fear. He wasn’t afraid of Pete’s face or what the egrigors could do with him, he wasn’t afraid of cuts or burns or god not this not again don’t let them take me again. Those weren’t his thoughts. They were Patrick’s, and Joe wanted nothing to do with them.

            He filtered out the jumbled, panicked thoughts, and tried to coordinate a response.

            “Nothing much,” he said. “Restrained me, cut my face a little, and threatened me. Borderline nice. For those guys, anyway.”

            “Threatened you?” Patrick asked. Joe looked over at him. The sun was still high in the sky, but none of the lights were on, and most of the curtains were drawn, so only a few dusty slats of muted light made it into the room. The place felt cold.

            “They said: ‘You’re next, dog,’” Joe said. Pete and Andy tensed, but Patrick looked the same. Flat and stoic and emotionless, just like his egrigor.

            Pete and Andy began talking, but Joe remained lost in his own world. As with most egrigor discussions, Patrick didn’t join in, and instead stood next to the window, looking outside and away from all of them.

            “...next like Patrick, so we need to keep an eye on him…”

            “...why now? Why wait this long, when we’ve had time to recover, now that we’re all in LA together…”

            “Unless we’re better apart…”

            “That doesn’t make any sense…”

            “...mean by ‘next’?”

            “Isn’t that obvious?” Patrick asked. His voice still sounded a little off, Joe thought. Not as gruff and ravaged as it had sounded when they first got him back, but stiff from lack of use. Patrick wandered back to the central area of the living room, turning on a floor lamp as he went. The warm light was comforting to Joe, and it must have been to Patrick too, because he seemed less tense with it on.

            Patrick sat on the couch next to Joe. Not very close to him, but it was still a nice gesture.

            “I told you that P- that not- fuck!- that they said they took me because they were trying to get to Pete,” Patrick said. “If they said Joe was next, then it sounds like they’re just… working through us to mess with you.” Patrick looked up at Pete. There was a tenseness in their eye-contact that Joe wasn’t sure he wanted to see, but thankfully they broke it off quickly.

            “So, what? I wait to get kidnapped and tortured?” Joe asked. Patrick didn’t flinch, but Joe felt him recoil internally.

“No,” Pete said. “We figure something out, and in the meantime…” he trailed off. He didn’t really have to finish the thought. In the meantime, they had to keep constant watch over Joe. He didn’t like the idea of 24/7 surveillance, but it was preferable to the alternative. Patrick rubbed at his right wrist, forefinger and thumb wrapped around the healing scar where ropes had torn through his skin. The reminder only added to Joe’s anxiety.

“Thoughtful of them to warn us,” Patrick said sarcastically “This time, anyway.” Under the stoic face, Joe could feel the fear in Patrick that was playing off his own, fear that had been there since Andy told him they ‘ran into friends’ at the restaurant. But he was holding himself together.

            “Right, so by ‘figure something out,’” Joe said. “You mean get rid of these things? These unkillable monsters?”

            “We don’t know they’re unkillable,” Pete said. “We know they can’t be killed the normal way. But, like, vampires can only be killed certain ways. Maybe it’s the same with them.”

            “Brings us back to the same problem we always have, doesn’t it?” Joe said. He was smiling without humor. They had spent a great deal of time talking about this already, and they kept coming to the same conclusion.

            After they got back from Chile, Pete, Joe, and Andy all threw themselves into research. They didn’t want to rely on Ryan or anyone else to figure this out for them, not with something this important anyway. The problem was that there wasn’t much information available on egrigors. The fad of making a poltergeist at home hadn’t lasted long, and there wasn’t much credible writing on it. The topic of egrigors wasn’t in any of Pete’s books, and only appeared in a few forums, mostly in passing, often disagreeing with other interpretations of the creatures. The only thing every source seemed certain of was that they were group thoughtforms, and they were created with intent.

            None of them had ever intended something like this. And though there were some arguments that egrigors could be created without intent, the consensus was that powerful egrigors came from powerful intent. Which meant that someone had made these things.

            All they had to do, in theory, was find the person who had made the egrigors. Find the person, convince them (via violence or otherwise) to explain how to destroy them, and then do it, no matter how difficult. The plan sounded simple on paper, but none of them knew where to start. Most of their enemies were dead or incapable of doing magic like that. The prime suspect had been Pete’s father, but he had been all too happy to tell them it wasn’t him.

            (“I did warn him, you know,” Azazel had said. “I told all of you multiple times to stay away from mirrors.”

            “You saw this coming?” Pete asked.

            “I knew something was coming that looked like you four,” Azazel said. “But I didn’t know what. I still don’t know what. You’re on your own, kiddo.”)

            “We’ll figure it out,” Pete said. “I don’t care how, but we will. They have to give up something about who made them eventually. They’ve slipped up before.”

            “Patrick,” Joe said, his voice low. There was a slight twitch in Patrick’s hand. “Did they say anything about… anything that could point to another person?”

            “Nothing I remember,” Patrick said. He was fidgeting, but for once, he was actually sitting with them and discussing the issue of the egrigors. Maybe the day’s progress hadn’t all been lost. Now seemed like a good chance to push for more information.

            “Maybe if you went over it,” Joe suggested. “A little more thoroughly. Everything that happened that day.”

            “I don’t remember everything,” Patrick said. “I was a little bit out of it. I can’t tell you everything they said.”

            ‘Can’t’ sounded a lot to Joe like ‘won’t,’ but he didn’t press anymore. He trusted that Patrick would tell them if the egrigors had said anything important. At least… he hoped.

            “Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Andy said. “Or ask ourselves why they showed up here and now?”

            “Does the location matter?” Patrick asked.

            “Maybe,” Andy said. “We’ve only seen them three times, so maybe our location has something to do with it.”

            “What the hell do Champaign, Santiago, and LA have in common?” Joe asked derisively.

            “It was just a thought,” Andy said. He paused, frowned. “Maybe the four of us aren’t actually safer together. They’ve never shown up when one of us was alone.”

            Patrick made a scoffing noise in the back of his throat. Andy sighed.

            “I mean, not like that,” he said. “We were all together in each of the cities. Between those times, there were plenty of times we were apart. Why ignore us for months in between?”

            “Maybe they just need that much time to plan,” Joe said. “They’re powerful, sure, but they seem pretty stupid.”

            “What about them is stupid?” Pete asked.

            “I need a drink,” Patrick said, standing up suddenly. “Anyone want anything?”

            Joe glanced at Patrick as he stood, shook his head, and kept going. “The plans aren’t foolproof,” Joe said. “Just. I don’t know. Us-proof.”

            “Well that’s the same thing,” Pete said. “So.”

            “Maybe we just need more outside help,” Joe said.

            “No one else can touch them,” Pete said.

            “But someone else could see the blind spots we’re missing,” Joe said. The couch dipped as Patrick sat down with a glass a little too full of amber liquid. He took a deep drink, too deep for straight liquor, and then leaned back, not looking any more relaxed.

            “For now, we should call someone else to come out here,” Andy said. “The four of us shouldn’t be alone. They can take us.”

            “We can’t live with an entourage,” Pete said. “We’ll go out of our fucking minds!”

            Joe growled.

            “It’s pathetic!” he burst out. “We’re so fucking helpless, and this is so fucking stupid, and we can’t do anything but hope they won’t attack us around other people? Of all the worthless-”

            The mostly-full glass in Patrick’s hand crashed to the floor with a slosh of liquid and a sound of breaking glass. Joe stopped to look at him and saw that Patrick’s face was still blank, but he was shaking.

            “Sorry,” he said, robotically. “Ah, I just- sorry about that.”

            He looked flushed as he stood up again, then when he returned from the kitchen with a towel to mop up the mess. Pete reached out to touch Patrick’s arm and Patrick jerked away, closing his eyes briefly.

            “Eyes?” Andy suggested, and Patrick all but snarled in response.

            “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s fine it’s fucking fine it’s-” he looked up and met Andy’s eyes, finally letting out a deep breath as he did so.

            “What’s wrong?” Andy asked.

            Patrick shrugged. “Hadn’t seen them in a while.”

            “I can call Gabe,” Pete said at last. “He’ll come over and- and we’ll figure it out. Babe, are you-?”

            “I’m gonna go upstairs,” Patrick said. “I’ll get a kick out of showering without a cover over my leg. Lemme know what I missed.”

            Once his footsteps had trailed off upstairs, Andy heaved another deep sigh.

            “This doesn’t really change anything,” he said. “We’ve got to keep going with our lives, with the album. We’re just going to have to be on guard, that’s all. If we’re ridiculously careful, nothing can happen to us.”

            “Knock on wood,” Joe muttered.

            Pete laid his phone down in his lap and shrugged. “I still invited Gabe over. It’s a good idea to keep people around when you can. Like you said, Joe, he can help catch things that slip through the cracks.”

            “And when we get rid of these things, I’m putting myself in solitary,” Joe said. He glanced at the stairs, then back at Pete. The whole living room still smelled strongly of whiskey. “How’s it been?” he asked, all of them knowing full well what he meant.

            “Bad,” Pete said shortly. The purple rings under his eyes were dark and pronounced, more noticeable than when Joe first got there. “Pretty bad. But he’s got insults carved all over him and he’s not catatonic, so. Better than I would’ve done.”

            That, Joe reasoned, was fair enough logic. Still he was sad, and frustrated, and still feeling unbearably helpless. Also-

            “Insults?” he repeated. Something nudged at the back of his mind, something he was missing.

            “The words,” Pete said. “They’re all just- shitty, mean words. I guess they were taunting him? He won’t talk about it. He won’t talk about anything.”

            “Have you guys talked about the, ah, little bundle of joy the stork is offering to deliver?” Joe had spent a lot of time thinking about Ashlee’s baby, but hadn’t found a good time to ask. This wasn’t a particularly good time, but he figured if they were already having a heart to heart, then he might as well bring it up.

            Pete looked just as helplessly blank as before.

            “Not really,” he said. “I mean, I told him, and he knows I can’t lie, but I told him I didn’t know what to do yet and he hasn’t really brought it up since. We’ve been too busy dealing with everything else.”

            “Is there anything we can do?” Joe asked. He didn’t really ask it like he expected there to be something he could do, but it felt like the right thing to do.

            “I don’t know,” Pete said. Truth be told, he looked as bad as Patrick, but Joe didn’t want to press it too far.

            Andy finished cleaning up the spill, rubbing down the floor till the room smelled more like all-purpose cleaner than alcohol. Joe sort of wished that he had taken Patrick up on the offer for a drink earlier. Upstairs, the sound of the shower kept running for ages. Somewhere during the prolonged silence, there was a knock at the door so loud that Joe jumped.

            “Gabe,” Pete said. He threw the door open, and Gabe ran in, white faced.

            “Have you heard?” he asked.

            “Heard that we’re all in danger?” Pete asked. “Because I didn’t think we had told you yet.”

            “Oh, super, multiple crises, my favorite,” Gabe said. “No, I heard that Bill is missing.”

            “Missing?” Pete’s voice got higher.

            “No one’s heard from him in a couple days,” Gabe said.

            “Is it…?” Joe trailed off. He wasn’t sure how to phrase his question. Was Bill having a breakdown? Had he said anything strange recently?

            “He just disappeared,” Gabe said. “According to Adam. Nobody’s spoken to him or seen him. But I think it’s magic.”

            “Why?”

            Gabe shrugged, frustrated.

            “Because he’s doing really well? Because it’s always magic bullshit?”

            “Because of the vampires?” Andy suggested. “I’ve heard vampires were going missing in Chicago.”

            “Could just be a magical creature thing,” Joe said. “Especially if nobody around Bill got taken too.”

            Gabe gave them a pleading look.

            “Maybe we should test your theory,” Pete said to Andy. “See if they can’t get to us in Chicago.”

            “I’ll go call my mom,” Joe said. “She’ll be thrilled.”

            “I’ll go pack,” Pete said. “Um, help yourself to the kitchen, Gabe. You coming with?”

            “Rescue mission?” Gabe said. He looked weary, but nodded. “Yeah. Always.”

            All five of them were on the first flight to O’Hare before they called anyone at the record label. Pete had suggested (rightly so, Joe thought) that this was the sort of situation where it was better to ask forgiveness than permission. And even though Joe still didn’t know what, if anything, could prevent the egrigors from getting to them, he felt like they were all fairly safe on a plane. Joe had just enough time to wash the blood off his face and repack his bags, and then they were gone.

            Thirty thousand feet in the air, all of Joe’s fears and his earlier panic attack felt silly. The egrigors were dangerous, yes, but they couldn’t touch anyone else, and they couldn’t kill him. Whatever this was, the four of them would survive it and overcome it. Just like any other villain. Until then, there were missing magical creatures to worry about.

            To Joe’s surprise, it was Andy who took the lead once they were on the ground. They weren’t even past the luggage rack when he started planning.

            “I think I know where we can start questioning,” Andy said. “There’s a vampire nightclub in the city where I used to go to get blood. Willing donors and all that. Someone there might know more about the disappearances.”

            “A vampire nightclub?” Patrick said. He sounded apprehensive. “Like a vampire hotel?”

            “Not at all,” Andy said. “It’s a permanent fixture in Chicago, for anyone passing by. It’s not, like evil.” He paused. “I mean, okay, maybe I should go in alone, but that’s not because there’s anything wrong with the place. They just might get the wrong idea if you smell… you know…”

            “Like a food source?” Patrick said. “Yeah, okay. That’s fair enough.”

            “But we really need to stay together,” Pete said. “Is there any way we can go with you?”

            Andy looked seriously harassed, but he nodded at last.

            “I guess,” he said. “If we’re very careful and if you all stay very close to me.”

            “Am I a part of this?” Gabe asked.

            “Do you want to come to the vampire club?” Andy asked.

            Gabe frowned, considering it. “I guess.”

            “Fantastic,” Andy sighed. “Okay, we can all go together.”

            “Can we drop off our stuff first?” Joe asked.

            “Drop your stuff off?” Gabe said. “Drop your stuff off? Bill could be dying right now, and you want to stop to deal with your luggage?!”

            Joe winced, drew back. Gabe was right. Bill could be dying, he could be getting tortured. But Joe was going to stay pragmatic if it killed him.

            “Well, we can’t exactly fight monsters while dragging around our suitcases,” Joe said. “So what’s the nearest hotel to the vampire club?”

            Gabe didn’t look happy. Pete looked actively concerned. Patrick continued to look impassive.     

            “The good news here is that the vampire club is accessed through a hotel,” Andy said. “So we may as well check in first.”

            The five of them squeezed illegally into a cab that was not designed for five people and headed straight for the heart of downtown. The cab driver raced through traffic, clearly eager to get them out, and stopped, to Joe’s surprise, in front of Millennium Park.

            “Where exactly-?” he began, and Andy gestured to the Congress Hotel across the street.

            “That makes sense,” Pete said. “It’s supposed to be one of the most haunted hotels in Chicago. But if it’s already set up for vampires, why didn’t Andrea host her, ah, thing here?”

            “The proprietors of the place I’m taking us to are generally opposed to genocide balls,” Andy said. “No DTK’s allowed. But don’t get off your guard,” he said sharply. “They’re still dangerous.”

            Joe didn’t really think any of them needed reminding, but he nodded anyway. They took a brief moment to take their things up to their room, then got back in the elevator. Andy hit the B3 button three times in a row, then pressed the numbers 2, 5, 6, 6 again, then 3. The elevator shot downwards, and Joe raised his eyebrows at Andy.

            “A secret code was easier than herding lost kids back up to their parents,” Andy said.

            “You were part of some MI6 shit while we were eating stale takeout every night,” Joe said, more impressed than angry.

            “Like I said,” Andy said. “Nobody wanted kids to get hurt.”

            The elevator seemed to move faster than usual, though it might have just been in Joe’s head. There was no number over top of the buttons telling them what floor they were passing, so his only tell was the swooping sensation in his stomach.

            “We must be below the hotel,” Gabe said at last. “Practically in the sewers.” As soon as he spoke, the elevator eased to a stop. The doors slid open to reveal a long, dark, cold hallway. Joe could hear the sound of water trickling down the stone walls on either side of them.

            “Lower, I think,” Andy said. He led the way out, footsteps echoing around the hall. The only light once the elevator doors closed was a dim, red glow at the end of the tunnel.

            “Not exactly an easy access place, huh?” Joe said. Though he was speaking quietly, the watery echo of his voice was impossibly loud in the tunnel.

            “At least it’s a finished sewer,” Patrick said faintly. “No feces, no alligators, no crossdressers.”

            “Wait, what?” Gabe asked.

            “I don’t like to generalize, but a lot of vampires have a, ah, flair for the dramatic,” Andy said.

            As they drew closer, Joe saw that the red glow was emanating from a classic neon sign, a big, cursive scrawl of “Sanguis Nocte” hung over the top of a windowless black door. Andy turned and glanced back at the rest of them, his face twisted up in a frown.

            “It’s really not too late for the rest of you to go back,” Andy said. There was the hint of a plea in his voice. Joe kept walking, outstripping Andy as he made his way toward the door.

            “We stick together,” Joe said, and he didn’t look at Patrick, and he tried not to feel overwhelmed by guilt. Too late to change the past.

            “Then stay close,” Andy said. He rapped three times on the door, and a panel slid away, revealing a pair of luminescent, silvery eyes.

            “Resident, or tourist?” a cool, feminine voice asked.

            “Tourist, but former resident,” Andy said. He frowned. “Um, I brought friends. It’s complicated, but they have to stay with me.”

            “Tourists?”

            “No,” Andy said. “They’re not vampires.”

            “Feeders?” she asked.

            “No,” Andy said, more firmly this time. “Just friends. Most of them aren’t human.”

            Joe thought he heard a soft sigh.

            “Are they willing to pay the tourist cover charge, and sign waivers?”

            “Yes,” Andy said. The door slid to the side, and a very pretty vampire handed Andy a stack of papers. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms, waiting while each of them signed a slip of paper. Joe only scanned his, but it said nothing about feeding, only warnings about the dangers of vampiric alcohol and a strict no tolerance policy for violence.

            “Have fun,” she said dubiously as she collected the papers. “And keep an eye on your human. We only ever get feeders here.”

            Joe didn’t have to look to feel Patrick bristle, but the five of them walked in.

            Past the door, the club looked like any of the nightclubs Joe had been in before, from the old days of performing in small venues and the slightly less old days of going out with Pete between girlfriends. Everyone was washed out in throbbing blue lights, there were girls in tight sequined dresses, and some people were dry humping in a fashion he might have called dancing, had he felt more charitable. It looked perfectly normal, except for the faces of the patrons, and the drinks. The majority of the people in the club had the tips of their fangs hanging out over their lower lips, and all of the drinks were dark and thick with blood, sloshing and staining the sides of martini glasses red. The warm, rusty smell of it was thick in the air.

            “Andy, this does not seem like your scene, dude,” Gabe said. The five of them were walking a little closer together than when they had first stepped in, Joe noticed.

            “I didn't come here often,” Andy admitted. “But I heard about the place, and it always had blood when nowhere else did. Also, gossip. We just never really needed information before.”

            “What about the last time a member of The Academy Is… got kidnapped?” Patrick asked. His knuckles were white and he was holding himself tightly, though his voice sounded steady and a little annoyed. “When you and Pete dragged us all over the North side looking for Sisky?”

            “It was daylight,” Andy said with a shrug. “And I really don’t like this place. But Bill’s been missing for two days. It’s different this time.”

            This was different from that last time, Joe thought, but he didn’t like the fact that the current problem had taken them to this place. It felt innately wrong, surrounded by so many fangs flashing in the club lights. If things went badly, for any reason, all of them were dead. The inescapable smell of blood combined with the loud music was giving him a headache. So, whatever Andy’s plan was, Joe hoped it involved all of them leaving as soon as possible.

            Andy led them deeper and deeper into the club, pulling them past a long bar with backlit alcohol and blood bags hanging in rows. They were walking quickly, clearly in a tight pack, but out of nowhere, a cold hand closed around Joe’s wrist and tugged at him.

            “Want a sip?” a girl asked. She was loosely holding Joe’s wrist, her eyes huge against her pallid face. She looked just as pale, if not paler, than the vampires themselves, but she was obviously human. From her frail grasp to the faded scars all over her neck and arms, she broadcast her status.

            “I’m not- I don’t-” Joe said, pulling back as gently as he could. She held tighter, though still her grip felt brittle.

            “Please,” he could barely hear her over the music. “I’ve only given twice today, I can go again,” she stared up at him, desperate. Her eyes were glazed, and Joe could see a trickle of blood coming from her neck.

            “Time to go home, bloodslut,” a woman said. She dragged the girl away from Joe and gave him a dirty look, flashing her fangs at him. Joe stepped back, only to be pulled along by Andy.

            “Don’t stop for them,” Andy said.

            “She grabbed me,” Joe protested, but they were moving again. Joe glanced around, and now that he was paying attention, he could see the humans in the crowd. Gaunt, desperate looking, and most with the same glassy eyes as the girl that grabbed Joe. Joe remembered that vampire bites were supposed to feel good to humans, but he hadn’t fully realized the implications of the bites feeling pleasurable. These people were all desperate to get bitten.

            Once they were in a slightly quieter corner in the back of the club, near a series of small, curtained off rooms, Andy sighed, facing them again.

            “We need to fan out a little,” he said. “But stay close, don’t get near their mouths, and don’t drink anything.”

            “You do not have to tell us twice,” Gabe said fervently. “Do we just… ask about missing vampires?”

            “Whatever you think is best,” Andy said, and then he was enveloped by the crowd.

            There was a reason, Joe thought, only a touch bitterly, that he was usually in charge of things. The bar wasn’t far, so he squeezed through some of the gyrating vampires to get to a barstool, shivering as he brushed against them. He met the bartender’s eyes and she was in front of him in a flash, spidery hands splayed out on the bar.

            “What can I get you?” she shouted over the music. Joe thought about that for a second.

            “Do you have bourbon?” he asked. She nodded, pouring him a shot before he could say anything else.

            “You want it mixed up here, or did you bring a juicebox?” she asked. She could have been speaking another language for all it meant to Joe, but then he glanced at the blood bags on the shelves, then back at the crowd where vampires tugged dazed looking humans along with them. Joe fought back the wave of nausea in his stomach.

            “Straight is fine,” Joe said, a little too quiet, but of course, the vampire could hear him. He drank fast, then turned to the man next to him, a shaggy haired guy who looked almost as uncomfortable as Joe felt.

            “If I ask you if you come here often, you promise not to think it’s a line?” Joe asked. The vampire looked up and laughed a little.

            “If it’s not a line, why are you asking?” he said, flashing his sharp teeth at Joe.

            “Well, because I’ve never been here before,” Joe said. “But if you’re a regular, I can’t tell why you look so damn terrified.”

            “See, you really do sound like you’re flirting,” the guy said. He sighed. “I’m just not having a good week. And I don’t usually come here, but I was hoping I’d find my friend here.”

            “Your friend,” Joe said. “Have they gone missing recently?”

            The guy looked up, frowning. “I haven’t seen her in a few days, no,” he said. “Why?”

            Joe leaned in close, close enough to smell the blood on the other man’s breath.

            “I’m missing a friend of mine too, and trying to get to the bottom of it,” he said. “You heard about the missing vampires recently?”

            The man narrowed his eyes, looking Joe up and down carefully. He inhaled deeply, and Joe pulled back a second too late.

            “What the hell is a werewolf doing in a place like this?” the vampire asked. Fortunately, he didn’t look angry, just stunned.

            “Like I said,” Joe said. “Just here for information. I signed a waiver at the front and everything.”

            “That’s… brave,” the vampire said. “Kinda stupid, but brave.”

            He looked extremely reluctant to talk to Joe now that he knew what he was. He was even leaning further back in his bar stool, so Joe flagged down the bartender again.

            “Put whatever he’s having on my tab,” Joe said, and the vampire raised his thick eyebrows at Joe.

            “I’ve only heard rumors,” the guy said. The bartender handed him a tall glass that Joe would have assumed was a Bloody Mary at any other bar. “And they sound pretty crazy to me.”

            “Everything helps,” Joe said. The vampire drank, and Joe wrinkled up his nose.

            “Do you never get sick of the taste of blood?” he asked. “I don’t mean to be offensive, I’m just honestly curious.”

            The guy laughed a little, the loose, warm laugh of someone who was already well on their way to drunkenness.

            “Not really,” he said. “I crave other stuff sometimes, but no, I never get sick of blood.”

            “Gross,” Joe said.

            “That’s a little offensive,” the vampire said.

            “Consider it your free pass to make one wet-dog-smell joke,” Joe said. The guy laughed a little again, and then shrugged.

            “People’ve been disappearing for a couple months now,” he said. “First it was random, or, it seemed like it was. There aren’t that many vampires in Chicago. Five humans go missing, that’s a Sunday afternoon. Five vampires go missing, there’s talk.

            “Only weird thing is that most of them were new. Not that weird, really, cause older vampires know when and how to keep their heads down, so most shit happens to the younger ones. Then a couple weeks ago, things changed. Older vampires started disappearing, but not many of them. The weird rumors started because all the older ones-- and again, I’m only talking, like, twelve people max-- they were all part of this… this thing a few years back.”

            “What thing?” Joe asked.

            “I dunno,” the guy said. “Not a gang, exactly, but kind of like one. I’ve only been a vampire a few years old, so it was before my time, but the way I understand it they were like the mafia. Some big conglomeration run by this girl that was trying to band all the vampires of the world together for some reason. Remember when that old hotel burnt down a few blocks away? That happened at their meeting.”

            Joe blinked. He felt like he could feel the floor swaying under his feet.

            “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” he said.

            “You heard of them?” the guys asked, mildly surprised.

            “Think so,” Joe said. “The girl who was in charge, what was her name?”

            “Not sure,” the guy said.

            “Was it Andrea?” Joe asked.

            “Yeah, that’s it!” the vampire said. “So you have heard about this.”

            “Vaguely,” Joe said. “The vampires who have been disappearing, they were working for Andrea?”

            “Some of them,” he said. “But again, lots of vampires have been going missing. That’s only a connection among some of them.”

            Joe could feel his heart hammering in his chest.

            “And the girl you’re friends with,” he said. “Was she one of them? Did she work for-”

            “Yeah,” he said. “She told me she was working with them even before Andrea was in charge.”

            “What?” Joe said.

            “Well, yeah,” the guy said. “Andrea inherited the thing from her sire, you know. Terrible business. She died when the hotel went up in flames.”

            “Right,” Joe said. “Okay, what’s your name?”

            “Christian,” the guy said.

            “Right,” Joe said again. “Christian,” he found an old receipt in his back pocket and scribbled down his name and number before handing it to the vampire. “Call me if you hear anything else, okay? And I’ll let you know if I find out about your friend-”

            “Rose,” Christian said. He took the pen and wrote a number on Joe’s arm. “Let me know if she’s okay.”

            “We’ll do,” Joe said. And then he was running, shoving through people as he made for where they had split up.

            “ANDY!” he shouted. His voice was barely louder than the music, and Joe felt like he couldn’t catch his breath through the shock of his news. The lights in the club were pulsing red, and Joe couldn’t make out his friends in the sea of washed out, flashing faces.

            “ANDY!” Joe shouted again. Far off, he caught sight of people who looked like Gabe and Pete standing together, and he shoved a group of people aside to get to them. A man ran his fingers through Joe’s hair and murmured something about bloodsluts walking around on their own, but Joe kept walking, too fast for him to catch up.

            Joe grabbed Pete’s arm and Pete flinched away from him before he saw Joe.

            “I thought you were going to try and drink my blood too,” Pete said, smiling for a second before he took in Joe’s face. “Hey, are you--?”

            “WHERE’S ANDY?” Joe shouted.

            “I don’t know!” Pete said. He turned to Gabe, who also shrugged, and Joe groaned, turning around again.

            “ANDY!” he shouted. Pete pulled at his shirt to get his attention.

            “WHAT’S WRONG?” he yelled.

            Joe didn’t know how to explain quickly. Andrea was dead. He had watched Andy kill her, but the fact that so many of her cronies had gone missing along with Bill… it had to mean something, and he didn’t want Andy surrounded by vampires while there was so much up in the air.

            Joe spotted a flash of red hair through the strobe lights and ran forward.

            “Andy!” he shouted, and though Andy turned to look at him, he kept running forward, away from Joe. Joe followed after him into a crowd that had gathered around another part of the bar.

            “Andy,” he said again, finally grabbing Andy’s arm. “Shit, slow down, I have to talk to you!”

            “Not now,” Andy said. He was trying to worm his way through the tight circle of people. It was funny, Joe thought as he followed Andy in pushing through, because this circle of people looked kinda like the circles that formed around fights in high school.

            “Put the stake down!” someone shouted.

            “Crazy fucking son of a bitch-”

            Joe could just see over the top of a girl’s head where Patrick was knelt over a vampire, holding the point of a stake to the center of his chest. Blood was trickling out of his wrist and dripping on the milky, exposed skin of the vampire’s collar.

            “Fucking bloodslut,” he growled. Patrick pushed the stake down harder, till blood began spilling out of the vampire’s chest as well.

            Someone who worked for the club, a vampire in a black t-shirt with the logo on the back yanked Patrick off the vampire and started dragging him to the exit, Joe following close behind.

            The bouncer didn’t throw Patrick to the floor, but she did push him rather roughly out the door.

            “No stakes are allowed on the premises,” she said. “No fighting is allowed on the premises. No threats on another person’s life are allowed on the premises-”

            “He sunk his teeth into my arm without even speaking to me!” Patrick shouted. “Is that allowed?”

            “You did sign a waiver warning you of the consequences,” she said. Patrick was furious, but before he could shout back, the woman had turned around and slammed the door on them.

            Luckily, Joe could see that Andy, Pete, and Gabe had followed them out, all in various states of dismay. Patrick dusted himself off and winced, then wrapped his free hand around his bleeding wrist.

            “What?” he snapped.

            “You got into a bar fight… with a vampire,” Andy said. He sounded both exhausted and a little angry.

            “C’mon,” Joe said, walking back down the hallway and towards the elevator. “Let’s deal with this outside.”

            Up in the hotel room, Patrick sat at the foot of the bed, still clutching his bleeding wrist. Pete sat next to him, a foot apart, but they were clearly sitting next to each other. Joe leaned up against the window, watching as the streets got emptier and emptier.

            “...stupid shit to pull!” Andy was shouting. He’d been going at it for a while. “It’s lucky the whole bar didn’t kill you for getting out a fucking stake, much less holding it to his chest!”

            “He bit me!” Patrick screamed. Joe actually jumped, he hadn’t heard Patrick raise his voice in so long. Andy looked taken aback as well. “He said ‘Hey there, bloodslut,’ and bit my wrist so I pulled out a stake to let people know the fucking buffet wasn’t open.”

            Andy deflated. Pete took Patrick’s hand, and Patrick let out a huff of a sigh.

            “Well we got kicked out without any information,” Andy said. “So now-”

            “Actually,” Joe said. “We didn’t. I was trying to tell you.” He stood up, glanced at Andy. “I met a vampire down at the bar who said that a lot of vampires recently have been kidnapped. People who used to work with a vampire named Andrea.”

***

            Patrick’s life seemed to be in the habit of making all his horrible days stretch themselves out to impossible lengths. This day hadn’t started so badly. He had gotten his cast off at long last. He had been doing well, actually. And then everything fell apart, like it always did.

            His wrist was still throbbing lightly while they spoke, Joe detailing his conversation with Christian. The blood flow had slowed a little, but the bite still hurt. He was trying his best to follow the conversation, but he was exhausted. He hadn’t slept much the night previously, and blood loss always made him more tired than usual. He despised the fact that he had experienced it enough to know that.

            “Andrea,” Andy said slowly. “Well, we know she’s dead.”

            Patrick scooted a little closer to Pete. He was trying to be better at being around all of them, and hell, he slept in the same bed as Pete almost every night, but it was harder to be close to people when he was on edge like this. He moved till their thighs were just brushing.

            “So do you think it’s pro-vampire eugenics, or anti?” Joe asked. “Because the way I figure it, they’re either trying to recruit or kill off all the survivors.”

            “What does this have to do with Bill?” Gabe asked.

            “He was with us?” Joe shrugged. “He helped us burn down the Drake. He fought all the vampires with us. Maybe someone with a grudge recognized him.”

            Gabe made an awful noise in the back of his throat.

            “That still isn’t enough information to go on,” Joe said. “So we need to find out more. But we definitely can’t go back to Sanguis.”

            “There’s other places,” Andy said. “We probably wouldn’t have found out much more there anyway. They’re not a very open place.”

            “Where next?” Gabe asked.

            Home, Patrick wanted to say. A police station, so professionals could deal with this. To the rest of Bill’s band, to let one of them deal with this shit.

            “We could call the Salem girls,” Patrick suggested. He kept his eyes fixed on the carpet like he found the pattern interesting. “See if they’ve heard any rumors. Or, Andy, do you have any other vampire friends here?”

            “Not exactly friends, but I know some people,” Andy said.

            Patrick was just so exhausted.

            “I can call the Bitches,” Pete said. Patrick could hear the smile in his voice.

            “I’ll check in with the other guys,” Gabe said. “Then we can follow whatever lead looks most promising.”

            It was only ten at night.

            “Hey.”

            Joe’s voice, way too close to Patrick’s ear, made him jump. Weakhelplesshuman. He looked directly into Joe’s eyes and forced himself to breathe steady.

            “You okay?” Joe asked. Patrick was torn. He was the only one that had a get out of jail free card for the night. The only one of them who could complain about how bone-deep exhausted he was and go to sleep. But, unfortunately, that would really set him back on his long-term goal of getting the others to treat him like a normal human being again. So, with great difficulty, he shook his head. And promptly realized he was supposed to have nodded.

            “I’m fine,” he said. He should have been fine. He’d been bitten by a vampire, no big deal, happened all the time. The egrigors had shown up again, it wasn’t like anyone really thought they were gone. (Except that Patrick had, he had believed they were never coming back because telling himself that they were gone was the only thing that got him to sleep at night but now they had come out and proven that they weren’t done and how was he ever supposed to sleep again and) He was tired, yes, but everyone was. And Bill needed their help. Patrick, of all people, wasn’t going to go to sleep while someone was kidnapped, because there was no saying where they might be, or what might be happening.

            Joe didn’t call him on the lie, though, so that was nice. Instead he kept a polite distance and moved on with the conversation.

            “So, the room only has two beds,” Joe said. “Should we be getting a second one, or-?”

            “No, I called my mom before we even got to the airport,” Patrick said. He suspected that Joe had already overheard that conversation, but it gave them something to talk about, which was probably the point. “She’s thrilled to have me and Pete over. We probably shouldn’t show up too late, but I doubt she’s asleep yet, and I told her we’d be out late on business.”

            “The glamorous music business,” Joe said. He fidgeted a little on the bed. “Did you want to bandage that?”

            “Huh,” Patrick looked down at his wrist. He was used to gore, to blood dripping off parts of his body, but he supposed it would be best to try and stave off any excess bleeding. His red blood cell count was still, apparently, a little low for a man of his size. “Yeah, I guess. Thought vampire wounds were supposed to heal themselves.”

            “They’re also supposed to feel good, but…” Joe shrugged. He pulled a sterile bandage out of who knows where and wiped off Patrick’s wrist. The wound was worse than it should have been, and Patrick could see where the thing’s fangs had dragged, ripping open a little further, all the way down to the pink lines of where the ropes had torn up his wrists.

            “Is this okay?” Joe asked.

            “Fine,” Patrick said.

            He wasn’t usually this off, he thought. Even lately, he might not have been the pre-torture version of himself, but he was functional. He wrote music, sometimes, and went about life as normal. Or a quieter version of normal. At the same time, he wasn’t great. He had nightmares, he couldn’t walk well, and he spent almost every second living with his boyfriend who looked just like one of the things that tortured him. Threatening to kill a vampire was the closest he’d felt to himself in months, but even that ended up with Patrick bracing himself against Andy scolding him, knowing that Andy was speaking but not being convinced it wasn’t Not Andy every time he raised his voice.

            “I mean, does it hurt?” Joe said, bringing Patrick out of his thoughts.

            “It’s a cut,” Patrick said. “It’s going to.”

            Joe gave him a look that was way too serious for discussing a minor injury from a vampire bar fight. Then he nodded.

            “Okay,” Andy said. “I’ve got a girl willing to meet up with us to talk tomorrow.”

            “Carson said that they’d heard about old friends of Andrea’s going missing, but nothing else,” Pete said.

            “No word from Adam and Mike about Bill,” Gabe said. “But they’re still looking.”

            “New plan of action, then,” Joe said. “Andy, got any other places we can check out?”

            “There’s a blood bank way up in Evanston,” Andy said. “It opens at midnight. We can stake the place out.”

            “Bad pun,” Pete said, after too long of a pause.

            “Guess we’re going to Evanston,” Joe said. “We’ve got a few hours, Patrick, did you want to go get set up?”

            “Sure,” Patrick said. He glanced at Pete, who looked delighted that Patrick had noticed him. Patrick felt guilty at the “Who, me?” look on Pete’s face. He was trying, but…

            Gabe seemed placated by the agreement that they were getting back together to do more research in a couple of hours. Patrick was nervous, but the overwhelming desire to go home outstripped his concern.

            The taxi driver didn’t look thrilled to be taking them all the way to Glenview, but Patrick gave him some of the money up front, and he took off without complaint. The backseat was dark and awkward. Patrick didn’t do well with the dark, and he did much worse with Pete in the dark. He didn’t ask if they could turn the light on inside the cab, but he leaned against the door for the whole thirty minute drive.

            “Boys!” Patrick’s mom was at the door before Pete and Patrick had gotten out of the car, and Patrick all but ran to her. Patrick was secure enough in his masculinity to admit that he missed his mom.

            And of course, he hadn’t seen her in three months and he was always excited to see his mom, and of course he always hugged her so tight he nearly lifted her off the ground. It was just that he was suddenly very overwhelmed by how much he had missed her this time, and he wished his boyfriend couldn’t see his aura for a moment.

            “You’re out so late!” Pat said, ushering them both in. “Was is it you said you were working on?”

            “Just band business,” Patrick said. “Music videos and stuff, they need to do that after dark. Thanks for letting us stay here, Mom.”

            “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You know perfectly well you’re both welcome anytime.”

            “We may be in and out a bit at night,” Patrick said. “You know, work and stuff.”

            “Of course.”

            Inside the same bright, shining kitchen that Patrick had spent half his life in, it was easier to see her, and by extension, easier for his mom to see him. She looked almost imperceptibly older, but still wonderful. When she looked him over though, she frowned.

            “We should get some rest,” Patrick said. “And then we have to head out again-”

            “Of course,” she said again. “Key’s where I always leave it.” She was scrutinizing him, and although Patrick was holding himself stiff and tall, she looked like she could see something that she didn’t like. She stretched out suddenly and pulled Patrick into another tight hug, rubbing her hand across his back.

            “Try and get some sleep,” she said.

            “Yes ma’am,” Pete said, and she laughed at him, and the two of them went to Patrick’s old bedroom.

            Patrick’s old bedroom was now a pretty bland guest bedroom that waited for the two of them. Pete flipped on the overhead light immediately, and Patrick turned on the bedside lamp. Pete gave him a sheepish smile.

            “This is always weird,” Pete said. “We were a little too old for sleepovers when you actually lived here, and now…”

            “Do you want me to make you a pallet on the floor?” Patrick deadpanned. “You know, sleeping in the same bed as another guy is kinda gay.”

            Pete laughed softly. He shouldered his bag off onto the floor, then took a step back. He gestured to the bed, not looking at Patrick. Like they were awkward strangers.

            “You can lay down for a bit,” Pete said. “I’ll just read or something, and wake you up when we need to head out again.”

            “You don’t have to- are you sure?” Patrick changed his mind halfway through his question. Pete smiled down at the floor.

            “Dude, you’re dead on your feet,” he said.

            “In my defense, I fought a vampire tonight,” Patrick said. Pete kissed his forehead.

            “I know,” he said. “It was very badass. Now get some rest.”

            “Only if you get some rest too,” Patrick said. He sat gingerly on the bed -- he wasn’t really in a lot of pain anymore, but it was habit -- and patted the bed next to him. Pete tentatively laid down with him. They could only get a few hours, but it had been a long day and any rest was welcome.

            Most of their days were long, in truth.

            Patrick lay next to Pete and tried to stay awake. The last thing he wanted to do was wake up the whole house with one of his nightmares, and if he fell asleep he was half convinced that was exactly what would happen. He had a bad habit of waking up screaming, and there wasn’t time for that tonight. As long as they were here, he could stay awake. Luckily for Patrick, it was hard for him to fall asleep with the lights on, but it would also keep Pete awake.

            “Is it good to be home?” Pete asked.

            “I guess,” Patrick said. “I don’t know. It’s still not quite…”

            He wasn’t sure what Chicago wasn’t quite, but it wasn’t quite something.

            Pete said something else, but Patrick was already drifting off, no matter how he tried to fight it.

            The room was dark, but not black. The lightbulb glowed dimly, and Patrick could see the figure writhing on the table. The room was all red, blood on the person, the table, the floor, the sheets on the ground. Black eyes, gleaming in the darkness, were the focus of Patrick’s tunnel vision.

            “No, baby,” Pete’s voice purred, but it was all wrong, honey-sweet and viscous, venomous. “We won’t hurt you anymore, I promise. We’ve got someone else.”

            Patrick couldn’t focus on the person lying on the table. He tried to yell for help, but his voice was gone. Nothing came out but gasps of air.

            “It won’t hurt anymore.” It sounded so much like Pete but it couldn’t be Pete, Patrick was sure it wasn’t.

            “Do you want to see it? What he looked like when he died?” Not-Patrick, Patrick knew that voice, was standing right in front of the table. His face looked like it was boiling as it changed, morphing into Patrick’s face. Not-Patrick transformed himself till he was identical to Patrick, naked, covered in scars, blood gushing from his throat.

            The man on the table started screaming, a horrible, agonized scream that cut Patrick deeper than a knife. It was Pete, the real Pete, crying out, and Patrick couldn’t take it, couldn’t handle anymore, wasn’t even allowed to screw up his eyes to prevent himself from seeing more, and finally the stopper in his throat was gone and he could scream-

            “-baby, shh!” Pete pleaded. Patrick stopped screaming instantly, looking up at Pete in horror.

            “Eyes?” Pete said, keeping his eyes fixed on Patrick as he asked.

            “I’m okay,” Patrick said at once. “I’m just- shit.” He shook his head, trying to ground himself in reality. No blood. No screaming. “God, how long was I-?”

            “Not long,” Pete said. “I don’t think anyone heard.”

            Patrick nodded. He stared at Pete a little too intensely. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted to apologize, but it wasn’t like this was an unusual occurrence.

            “We should probably head out soon,” Pete said after a moment. “I mean, you could stay if you want to.”

            “I’m fine,” Patrick said. He didn’t feel fine. His throat felt like it might stick again at any moment and his scars were itching, but staying in bed only ever made the feeling worse. “Let’s go interrogate some vampires.”

            The ride to the address Andy texted them was a little better. For one thing, it was a shorter drive, and it was far from residential, which meant more lights and more people and more distractions if Patrick was still breathing a little too heavily.

            The others were waiting outside, hands in their pockets, looking outrageously conspicuous.

            “You look like you’re waiting to buy weed,” Pete said. “But you don’t know it’s actually just oregano.”

            “We were waiting for you,” Joe said, sounding bored. “And now that you’re here: Andy, I’ve got a question for you. How is it not conspicuous to have a hookah bar that requires a secret password and that is only open from midnight till four in the morning?”

            “It’s not a hookah bar,” Andy said. “They just thought it would look much more conspicuous if it were billed as a cafe only open from midnight till four AM.”

            “This is a vampire… coffee shop?” Patrick asked. Andy made a face.

            “Actually, it’s just a magic coffee shop,” he said. He pointed up at the sign that read “Crimson Moon.”

            “Werewolves too?” Patrick guessed.

            “Werewolves too,” Andy agreed. “Apparently they’ve got a great transformation hangover breakfast.”

            “And you never told me?” Joe asked.

            “Again, you never asked,” Andy said. “Just keep a low profile, okay?”

            Patrick nodded. He could do a low profile. Probably.

            Crimson Moon wasn’t unsettling the way Sanguis Nocte was. The people hanging out inside were obviously vampires, but there were lights on, and the stench of blood was almost entirely covered up by the smell of coffee. It looked like a slightly cozier, brighter Starbucks, and while Patrick didn’t want to be lured into a false sense of security, he felt that this was a much safer place to be human.

            Patrick sat down in one of the clusters of chairs and tried to look nonchalant. The rest of his band and Gabe had fanned out, going their respective ways to talk to as many people as possible. Patrick glanced around, and when a tall woman sat down at a table next to him, he leaned over slightly and smiled.

            “Hi,” he said. “Sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if I could talk to you for a minute?”

            The woman flashed her fangs at Patrick.

            “I’m not actually all that thirsty, but thanks for the offer,” she said. “You smell heavenly.” Patrick stiffened slightly.

            “I meant talk when I said it,” he said. “I just had some questions.”

            “Oh,” she looked stunned, then a little annoyed. “Um, sure.”

            “I’ve heard vampires have been going missing lately,” Patrick said. She blew on her coffee.

            “Have you?”

            “Have you heard anything about it?” Patrick asked.

            “Nothing,” she said. Patrick was positive that she was lying.

            “Really?” he asked. “I’ve heard dozens of vampires in the Chicago area have gone missing in the past couple of months.”

            “Fascinating,” she said.

            “Please,” Patrick said. “Look, it’s important. My friend got taken, and I think he’s in danger.”

            “What makes you think I would know anything?” she asked.

            “Nothing,” Patrick admitted. “I’m just desperate.”

            She must have seen the plea in his eyes, because she finally sighed, rolling her whole head back before speaking again.

            “Look, you’re human, right?” she said. Before he responded, she continued. “You shouldn’t go looking for your vampire. You’re better off outside of this world. Nothing good ever happens to blood- to feeders. But if you’re that desperate, the name you want to ask about is Elijah. And you didn’t hear it from me.”

            Patrick didn’t even bother correcting her. She stood up and walked out of the shop with her coffee. Patrick inflated with pride. He’d done something, even if it wasn’t much. He should have maybe asked about Andrea, but he had a name. Elijah. It didn’t ring any bells.

            Andy was still caught in conversation, so there was no asking him. Patrick supposed he could find someone else to ask about Elijah, but he didn’t want to get caught scaring all the customers off. He had picked up a newspaper from the previous day and begun reading when he noticed someone from over the top of it. Slicked back hair, skin so white it looked gray, antagonistic eyes. Patrick was absolutely positive it was the same asshole he had held a stake to not four hours ago.

            Patrick jumped to his feet and crossed the cafe, trying to be both quick and inconspicuous. He cleared his throat right next to Joe, who jumped.

            “I think a friend of mine is here,” Patrick said, jerking his head back towards the vampire without turning all the way around. Joe’s eyes narrowed.

            “The guy from the club?”

            “Looks like it.”

            “Damn,” Joe said. He pushed his coffee cup aside and rounded up the others a little faster than Patrick. Gabe looked incensed to be leaving so soon, but Patrick consoled himself with the knowledge that he could give them at least some information to make up for their quick departure.

            “You think he’s following us?” Pete asked as soon as they were outside. Patrick had forgotten how dark it was, since the cafe had been so well-lit.

            “I doubt it,” Andy said. “He wasn’t looking at any of us, and there are only so many places for vampires to hang out. He might have gotten in some kind of trouble too. You’re not supposed to drink blood from humans without permission, even if having a stake is a worse offense.”

            Patrick felt like this was directed enough that he was supposed to apologize, but he wasn’t especially in the mood to do so.

            “Now what?” Gabe asked. The five of them walked away from the cafe, turning onto a darker side street. The low hum of anxiety in Patrick’s stomach intensified slightly, but he did his best to ignore it.

            “We can check out some human bars, I guess,” Andy said, a look of distaste plain on his face. “The odds of them having any information are slimmer, but people in this neighborhood at this time of night… one of them might know something.”

            “I did actually find out something,” Patrick said. He held his breath as they walked past the mouth of an alley, like a kid being going past a cemetery, warding off bad luck. “The woman I was talking to said we were looking for someone named Elijah.”

            “Elijah?” Joe frowned. “Who the hell is Elijah?”

            “She just said if we wanted to know about missing vampires we should ask for him,” Patrick said. “I’m guessing maybe he’s the one taking everyone.”

            “Maybe,” Andy said. “The name sounds familiar…”

            Before Andy could say anything else, something struck Patrick from the side and slammed him against a wall. Patrick’s head bounced off the brick, throbbing already.

            He tried to reach for his knife, but then his hands were smashed up against the wall as well. Someone was growling, and Patrick realized as his vision cleared that no one had jumped to his aid because his friends were all facing assailants of their own.

            “Did you think that was a clever trick, little bloodslut?” the man asked. Patrick looked up at the vampire from earlier. He had a widow’s peak, for fuck’s sake. Something about vampires with widow’s peaks really annoyed Patrick. It felt unbearably cliché.

            Of course, this internal monologue mostly ran in the background of surmounting panic in Patrick. The vampire’s hand were wrapped tight around his wrists, pinning them down in a sickeningly familiar way, and Patrick could hear his own heartbeat.

            “Wouldn’t be so damn feisty after a proper feed,” the vampire said, so close Patrick could feel his breath.

            The vampire opened his jaw wide, fangs slick with spit and venom, and Patrick lashed out, kicking him so hard in the legs that he let go of Patrick’s hands.

            Everyone went into motion at once. Gabe and Joe transformed to escape their captors, and Pete’s eyes glowed gold, doing nothing but causing the vampire to drop him like he was burning hot. Andy simply twisted and slammed the vampire holding him down into the ground, and just like that, they were fighting.

            Patrick was wrestling his wooden stake out of where he had stashed it in his belt when the vampire jumped him again, knocking Patrick roughly to the ground. Patrick let himself fall and used the time falling to drag the stake the rest of the way free, and he slashed at the vampire with it, cutting him roughly across his cheek. He could hear the sounds of the rest of his band fighting, but couldn’t focus on anything but the vampire in front of him.

            “Do you even know how to use that thing?” the vampire asked derisively, but while he goaded, Patrick got back to his feet, brandishing the stake in front of him.

            “I don’t want to have to kill you tonight,” Patrick said. The vampire’s lip curled.

            “Hunter?” he asked.

            “Just handy with a stake,” Patrick said. The vampire lunged at him again, and Patrick altered the position of the stake just slightly, causing the man to run himself into it. He hissed in pain, but it hadn’t gotten him in the heart.

            The vampire lurched around Patrick and grabbed him from behind. He held Patrick too tight to move, but Patrick was still holding his stake, and he raked it across whatever skin he could reach. He thought he might have gouged the vampire’s forearm, based on the pained noise it made.

            The victory was short lived, as Patrick felt the stake get ripped from his hand, and he was shoved forward, just catching himself on a light pole before he stumbled into the street.

            “You worthless,” worthless “annoying,” annoying “little human!” HUMAN.

            Patrick felt dizzy, swaying as the vampire lunged at him once more. Patrick ducked instinctively out of the way, and the vampire crashed into the same light pole Patrick had been clutching.

            Patrick wasn’t sure what happened. One second he had been present in the fight, even if he was a little on edge. Then the vampire hit the light pole, causing it to reverberate and shake intensely, and the tiny light bulb at the top flickered out.

            It was as though Patrick had split in two, existing in two different places at the same time. A part of him was still there, standing in the now very dark street, surrounded by angry vampires. The other half of him was thousands of miles away, tied down, dripping with blood.

            Patrick stumbled and sank to his knees. The sound of his heartbeat was painfully loud, a kick drum against his ears as he hit the pavement. He was bleeding and it was so dark and they were coming back, coming back for him-

            But he wasn’t, it was just dark outside, and he had to stand up, he was going to get killed if he didn’t-

            How could he stand up when he was tied down? What was the point of fighting to stay alive when he’d already made peace with death?

            He could hear his blood drip-drip-dripping on the floor and see the blurry outline of the door, just barely light, and he was alone in the dark, waiting to die.

            “Patrick!”

            It sounded like someone was calling to him from very far away but they couldn’t be unless it was one of the things, the not-band, come to torture him some more, and his cuts ached, searing against his skin, fresh and blistering.

            “Patrick!”

            But he got out, didn’t he?

            Vampires. Pete. Patrick slammed his eyes shut and opened them again, and the dark street swam in his vision again.

            Pete was kneeling down next to Patrick, eyes huge and face white. The others stood further back, but they were hovering, faces just as concerned and frightened as Pete’s. The attacking vampires were gone, and a sick sense of shame settled in Patrick’s stomach.

            “Where’d- where did they go?” Patrick asked. He sounded slurry, almost drunk, and he wanted to melt into the pavement.

            “Chased off,” Joe said. “We’re kind of intimidating.” He smiled, because it was meant to be a joke. Patrick balled his fists up in his lap. If they were shaking, no one else would see it.

            “Did- how long- ? We could still follow them,” Patrick said, trying to pull himself to his feet. The entire street swayed under his feet, and he crashed back down onto his knees. He was going to be covered with bruises in the morning. Bruises and skinned knees. Little kid injuries.

            “Yeah, let’s not chase down five fully grown vampires,” Andy said. “We’re lucky they’re scared of fae and were-cobras. Wouldn’t have run if they’d fought us much longer.” He smiled kindly, and it wasn’t out of pity, but Patrick still felt hot and embarrassed. Maybe he hadn’t been out long - he hadn’t been out at all, actually, not unconscious, just falling apart mentally, just going crazy - but it was long enough that all the vampires had vanished from sight.

            Patrick wanted to apologize, or maybe just scream, but instead he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced something like a smile onto his face.

            “Where to next?” he asked.

            Gabe looked confused.

            “Dude, are you okay?” he asked. The sick heat in Patrick’s stomach seemed to increase in volume, and he looked up, away from Gabe’s eyes. His eyes stung like he might start crying. Weak helpless pathetic.

            “Fine,” he said. “Just freaked out.”

            Gabe didn’t push it. Someone said that that was probably enough for the night, and Patrick pretended he didn’t know it was for his sake. Pete asked him something about his mom’s house, and Patrick shook his head. He couldn’t do a taxi, not this late, not like this, not just the two of them, and he couldn’t go back to his mom’s house while he was still this much of a mess. The hotel was closer, and staying together was easier. Groups were better. Especially when none of them tried to talk to him.

            Helpless.

            After a few words with the hotel clerk, Pete got them another room attached to the first one. Once they got to their room, Patrick walked into the bathroom, as if on autopilot.

            Patrick stared at himself in front of the mirror. He had never made a habit of running around shirtless, but now… He wanted to see himself. The cuts were mostly healed up, and the burns were almost fine, just shiny and tight. The bandages were off. All of them save for two: the one between his shoulder blades, the one that Ferrum said was probably made, very shallowly, with an electric screwdriver. The one that said “MINE” in gory, ragged letters. And of course, the big wide slash under the word “HUMAN.”

            He already knew what all the words were. He didn’t think he could ever un-know them. He tried not to think of them, but it seemed the harder he tried not to think of the words, the more he heard them everywhere. He heard them in passing: on TV shows, in songs, from his friends talking about other people. They weren’t to blame, of course. They couldn’t know what words to avoid because he had no intention of ever telling them what exactly had been carved and burnt into him.

            Of course, Patrick had toyed with the idea of telling them about the words. The insults that came from his friends. But he always concluded there was no way to say it. He could only picture the confession like some fucked up reimagining of the end of “The Wizard of Oz.” “And you were there, and you held the soldering iron, and you kissed me before trying to kill me…” Usually, when he imagined this, he gave his imaginary self a high pitched, Judy Garland voice. He felt spiteful, and all of his spite and hatred curved inward, right back at himself.

            Patrick found ways to cope. For example, he picked favorites. He liked the antonyms, words that were both his but made no sense next to one another. Up under his collar was the word “LOUD” carved with his own knife. Down by his hip was the word “QUIET,” also a knife wound. “WEAK” and “PUSHY,” “STUBBORN” and “COMPLACENT,” it gave him a little comfort to see that the insults, even ones he thought of himself, were nonsensical.

            Not a lot of comfort, though.

            He looked himself up and down in the mirror. There wasn’t a lot of bare skin to be seen. If he squinted and looked out of his peripheral vision, it was almost like looking at a normal shirtless person. He could pretend it was tattoos, when he squinted, sort of. But the harder he looked, the more he saw. The sick white lines of burn scars and the dark pinks of the cuts mingled and swam before his eyes.

            The scars, Dr. Ferrum had said, would probably never go away. She gave him creams for them anyway, ones that would lighten the look of them over time. But he would always see some remnant of them. Stupid pathetic human weak stubborn pale whiny.

            He traced his index finger across the word “HUMAN,” the old lines tingling where his finger touched them. It didn’t really hurt, not anymore. But he could still feel the sharp edge of the knife, a phantom pain, sort of.

            It didn’t matter how many times he had seen the words in the mirror, in flashes as he showered. The sight of them hit him with fresh grief every time. Grief for a whole life lost, in a way.

            Because what was he supposed to do with them? He hadn’t been intended to live with these scars. The egrigors had clearly meant for the words to be something that Pete saw when he found Patrick’s body. Now that he had to live with them, he didn’t know how. How was he supposed to ever go swimming again? How was he ever supposed to take his shirt off again?  If he broke up with Pete, how could he ever date anyone else? Hell, how could he date Pete anymore?

            They hadn’t had sex since Chile. It wasn’t like Patrick hadn’t wanted to, not exactly. But every time he went to take his shirt off, even while the bandages were still on, he felt overwhelmed with nausea, like he had been poisoned all over again. They could have been together with his shirt still on, obviously, but most of the time the simple reminder that he couldn’t get fully undressed killed the mood. The rest of the time, any number of other things could stop them. Sometimes when Pete started kissing him, he remembered the goodbye kiss Not-Pete had forced on him, and Patrick wouldn’t be able to catch his breath for ten minutes. Sometimes Pete would whisper in Patrick’s ear that he was beautiful, and the words “PLAIN,” “UGLY,” and “FAT” would all flare up at once, aching like they were fresh, and he would pull back, frozen. Once, Pete turned out the lights without warning, and Patrick screamed so loud the neighbors came over to check on them. And another time, when they finally made it to the bed, against all odds, were kissing without Patrick freaking out, had the lights dim but still on, Patrick shifted his jeans down just enough to get his dick out, and when Pete caught sight of one of the words (“OVERBEARING,” white hot and still warm to the touch) on his thigh, he shook his head and said that he couldn’t, he just couldn’t.

            At some point, they stopped trying. They lay in bed next to one another, and Patrick’s face felt almost as hot as the burns crawling all over his skin.

            Patrick wasn’t sure how long he spent staring at himself in the mirror. He traced some of the words that were easier to see, the ones that curled up into his collar and the ones right in the center of his chest. None of them overlapped, but they were cramped close together. There was nothing that couldn’t be covered by a t-shirt and boxers, save for the still angry rings around his wrists and ankles, but when his shirt was off, he could see everything.

            Patrick pressed his four fingers into the line on his chest, first lightly, then hard. He pushed in harder and harder until he could feel the pain again for real. It was a relief, almost, to feel the pain where it was really there. He wasn’t imagining this pain, it wasn’t in his head. He pushed harder and harder into the old scar. He longed for the sensation of sharpness. He wanted to tear himself open.

            Frustrated, furious, and desperate to do some fucking damage, Patrick ripped at the stitches on the scar. He dug his fingers in between the black thread, pushing till blood welled up and coated the tips of his fingers. He twisted his hand back and forth, jammed his fingers deeper into the wound. Blood trickled down his chest, slowly at first but gaining speed, and with savage satisfaction, he moved his hand and ripped the bandage off his back. He tugged and pulled and scratched until every letter in the word “MINE” was dripping blood down his back. His hands were shaking and his fingers were dripping red when he finished. He leaned forward on the counter, breathing hard.

            “Patrick? You okay? I thought I smelled blood?”

            Andy, of course, was something Patrick hadn’t accounted for. Swearing under his breath, he mopped the blood off the counter with a wad of toilet paper, and tried to calm himself down. It was easier now he was grounded, now that the buzzing under his skin had quieted slightly.

            “Changing bandages,” he said. The door was still locked. “I’m fine.”

            Patrick washed his hands, and stared himself down in the mirror. He felt marginally better, but he was still shaking.

            “Baby?” Pete called. “You okay in there?” He was also, apparently, taking forever.

“I’ll be right out,” Patrick called, his voice steady. He pressed the bandages back against his cuts, and took in a shuddering breath.

            Everyone knew who he belonged to.

            Patrick imagined he could still hear the buzz of the light bulb, though the light was out and all he could actually hear was his blood dripping. He could feel fear buzzing through his veins, and he wondered if that could be enough to kill him. Being this scared this long, it felt like it was leeching the life out of him.

            The door banged open, the light snapped on, and Not-Pete stood at the foot of the table, hatred apparent in his cold expression and flat, black eyes.

            “Did you miss me, sweetie?” he asked. He stepped closer and Patrick couldn’t flinch away. His wrists ached from struggling.

            “Come on, gimme a kiss,” Not-Pete said, leaning in, and for some reason, his breath smelled like blood. “Kiss me back and I won’t tell you what your boyfriend really thinks about you.”

            His nails were too long, pointed like daggers, and he brought them down, ready to dig into his wounds. Patrick opened his mouth to scream, and no noise came out.

            “Cry for me,” Not-Pete said. To his dismay, Patrick realized he couldn’t disobey this order because he was already crying. Not-Pete was raising Patrick’s knife, Patrick was bracing, and then-

            “Patrick?”

            The voice from behind Patrick was out of place. It wasn’t Joe or Pete or Andy or himself, but it was low and warm and familiar. Not-Pete looked up, confused, and then he was gone.

            “Patrick!”

            The bonds were gone from Patrick’s wrists and ankles, and he spun around to face the source of the voice.

            Standing there, just the same as the last day Patrick saw him, was Chicago.

            Patrick blinked up at him. Chicago had seen him naked before, but in the condition he was in, he felt self-conscious. He was filthy and he had been crying, but Chicago didn’t seem to notice. He put his hands on Patrick’s shoulders and stared at him, drinking him in. Patrick looked back into his warm, brown eyes, and felt like crying once again.

            “You’re not here,” Patrick said.

            “Patrick,” Chicago said again, saying his name like it was something reverent. “Patrick, Patrick, what are you doing here?”

            “I was kidnapped,” he said. “They’re- the egrigors- did you make them go away?”

            “Sorry, not here like this room,” Chicago said. He frowned. “You were tortured? No, not right now, what are you doing in me? In this city?”

            “We’re trying to find one of our friends, and- is this a dream?” Patrick asked. Grief hit him in the chest like something heavy and solid as a vampire crashing into him.

            “Yes,” Chicago said. “You’re dreaming. But I am here. Really.”

            “I don’t know what you mean,” Patrick said. He was still disoriented, still wanted out of the room. Chicago nodded.

            “I’ll show you,” he said. “Do you want to put something on? It’s your dream, you can do what you want.”

            Patrick had never found that to be the case in his dreams, but he nonetheless focused on wearing jeans and a t-shirt. And, while he was at it, tried to imagine the blood away. He was shocked to find that, not only had it worked, but he and Chicago were far, far away from the room where he had been tortured, and were instead standing in Millennium Park in midday sunshine.

            “Better?” Chicago asked.

            “What is this?” Patrick asked in response.

            “It’s your dream,” Chicago said. “I’m just here. I’m not really a person anymore,” he said, gesturing down at his body, which at least looked like it was real. “But I can take shape in dreams. Within the dreams of people in city limits.”

            “You’re in my dream,” Patrick repeated. He wondered if all the blows to the head had slowed own his thinking, because it seemed stupid to repeat.

            “Yeah,” Chicago grinned. “I try to visit people having really bad nightmares, and I felt a bad dream. Then… it was you.”

            Patrick stared at him. At his warm skin, his hair, his eyes, he was so tall, practically glowing in the sunlight, and Patrick threw himself at Chicago. He wrapped his arms around Chicago’s neck, and though it didn’t feel quite as real as real life, it was him. At some point, Patrick realized he was sobbing into Chicago’s shoulder, but somehow it didn’t matter so much. It was Chicago.

            The two of them meandered through Millennium Park. In spite of all the sunshine, the park was empty but for the two of them. For a while, Patrick just caught him up on what he’d missed. He talked about how big Carmilla had gotten, about getting kidnapped by mermaids, the dragon stalking them, and how he and Pete got together. He thought that it might have been awkward, telling his ex about his new relationship, but Chicago wasn’t awkward about it. He was just excited for Patrick, sincerely enthusiastic when Patrick told him about their first proper kiss. In all his time learning human emotions, Chicago seemed to have skipped over awkwardness.

            “What’s it been like for you, since you went back?” Patrick asked.

            “Good,” Chicago said. “Time doesn’t really pass the same way for me, so I don’t know how long it’s been, but I’ve changed after being human. I started trying to prevent nightmares, trying to influence the people living here. I want to make life better for people.”

            He was incredible, Patrick thought. They were holding hands, swinging their arms back and forth together, and the pressure of Chicago’s hand against his felt achingly familiar.

            Chicago didn’t want to talk about himself for long. He wanted to hear all about the world, about new songs Fall Out Boy had written and food Patrick had tried and how Brendon was doing and if any of his favorite parks had been vandalized. His boundless energy kept propelling the two of them forward and Patrick kept talking. Chicago wanted to hear everything, and Patrick’s voice didn’t tire no matter how long he spoke.

            During one of their rare lulls, Chicago sighed.

            “You’re going to wake up soon,” he said. Patrick frowned.

            “I don’t want to go,” he said. Chicago squeezed his hand.

            “I’ll be here again when you fall asleep,” he promised. “I didn’t want to visit you… at first. I thought it would be bad. But now, I mean, if you’re having nightmares, I can keep them away.”

            “Right,” Patrick felt like he had returned to earth from some great height. “Did you want to know about the nightmare?”

            “If you want to talk about it,” Chicago said. “I just thought for now, at least, I ought to get your mind off it.”

            “You’re amazing, you know that?” Patrick said. He paused. “And you were right. I do, so love you.”

            “I know,” Chicago said. He took a step back, and Patrick felt a brief moment of panic.

            “This is real, isn’t it? Not just something I dreamed up?”

            “Well, it is something you dreamed up, but it’s also real,” Chicago said. “See you tonight?”

            Before Patrick could respond, Chicago was fading, as was the city skyline behind him, and the scene dissolved in a sunny haze of brightness.

            Patrick drifted up into consciousness rather than slamming back into himself as he usually woke up. He felt warm all the way down into his bones, as though he had actually been standing out in the sun for hours. The downy comforter felt pleasantly heavy on top of his chest. Bright sunlight was streaming through the big windows, and Patrick could see the familiar skyline through the gauzy curtains. The glowing red dial of the clock next to the bed said it was noon, and Patrick couldn’t help smiling to himself. He had slept, with no sedative, for over eight hours. It was as though the sun itself had taken root inside him, or at least, that was how he felt as he got out of bed. Warm and bright and suddenly, unexpectedly, happy.

            He padded over to the door connecting the suites, which had been left open just a crack, so that Patrick could hear the voices wafting through to him.

            “...sleeping like the dead, for once.”

            “For once? What’s it usually like?”

            “Like last night, but a little… louder.”

            Patrick felt heat rise in his face, but he stepped out nonetheless, clearing his throat slightly.

            “Hey,” he said, and winced, because in real life his voice still sounded worn. “What’s up?”

            Patrick noticed, for the first time, that everyone else looked like shit. They had all slept, but the other four looked exhausted and were visibly scraped up from their fight the last night. They were also all staring at him like he was about to explode, so he smiled in a tentative, questioning way with both his eyebrows raised.

            “Nothing,” Joe said, too fast, guilty sounding. It was a little awkward, but it didn’t bother Patrick as much as it had yesterday.

            “Sorry about last night,” he said. “I don’t know what that was all about. But we got the information about Elijah, right? So, we’ve got something to look for tonight. Earlier, if you know anyone else we can ask for info.”

            Gabe seemed to think this was a natural response, but the rest of Fall Out Boy looked stunned.

            “Did you guys already have breakfast?” Patrick asked. More than stunned, actually, Joe, Andy, and Pete looked at him like he’d sprouted an extra head.

            “No, we were waiting till you woke up,” Gabe said.

            “We could go down to the diner or something,” Patrick suggested. “I’ll buy, and we’ll get endless coffee while we plan.”

            “Um, sure,” Joe said. “You seem, ah. Pretty chipper today.”

            Patrick shrugged. He was still smiling, and it didn’t feel forced at all.

            “I feel hungry,” he said.

            In spite of the fact that it was the middle of the day, Patrick felt like they were probably safe going to their usual diner up on Clark Street, and he was pleasantly vindicated to see that the diner was mostly empty. Patrick got an enormous breakfast platter, even though it was nearly one in the afternoon when they got there, and told Pete he’d give the bacon to him.

            “You feeling okay?” Pete asked eventually. “You’re acting really cheery.”

            “I feel great today,” Patrick said. The attention was starting to wear on him, but he still felt great. Queen was playing quietly through the speakers in the ceiling, and the day was bright and sunny, matching his mood perfectly.

            “Why all the smiliness?” Joe asked. Patrick paused before he answered.

            “I slept well,” he said at last. “Had good dreams. You guys?”

            Pete smiled hugely at Patrick, and for the first time since he woke up, Patrick felt a twinge of a negative emotion. It wasn’t quite guilt, because there was nothing to be guilty about. It wasn’t like he was cheating on Pete, nothing like that. But not telling him made him feel weird.

            “Do you have anyone else we can talk to?” Joe asked Andy. Patrick was grateful when the waitress came and he could start eating to keep his mouth busy, rather than worry about what he was or wasn’t saying to his boyfriend. It wasn’t bad if he wanted to keep Chicago to himself. It wasn’t. And if he could stop feeling like that was something to be ashamed of, he would really believe himself.

            “Believe it or not, I wasn’t all that popular in vampire crowds. You know, being vegan, murdering a pretty popular girl. It didn’t exactly warm them to me,” Andy said. “Shame this isn’t going down in Salem.”

            “If it were going down in Salem, the Bitches would have already solved it,” Joe said with a grin.

            “I still don’t believe you hung out with a radical lesbian vampire girl gang,” Gabe said. “Just for the record.”

            “Tell him, Pete,” Joe said, and Pete smiled.

            “Nah, you guys can solve it yourselves.”

            “PETE!”

            It was nice, Patrick thought. Normal. He had to focus on staying in the moment so he didn’t get overwhelmed by the sound of his friends’ voices, but other than that, he was doing well.

            This day was less frantic. They walked around the city, not wanting to waste time that could be spent hunting down Bill and the other missing people, but there were no vampires to question in the daylight. Instead, they went to old haunts: clubs they had played and restaurants they had gone to after shows. Patrick’s relationship with Bill outside of music had been next to nothing when they both lived in the city, so he wasn’t sure where all else they could look. And, although having a good time wasn’t the point, exploring around the city on foot was nice.

            The sun was just starting to sink in the sky when Andy led them to yet another restaurant downtown where they were going to meet up with his contact. It was suddenly unbearably funny to Patrick how seriously they were taking this, calling people contacts and meeting under the guise of going to dinner. They were all just making this up as they went along, no different than when they were unsigned and picking fights with gargoyles in back alleys.

            Chez Rouge was the sort of upper middle class restaurant where dressing up in business casual or Sunday best was the standard, but none of the guys were kicked out for dressing like they were on tour. Jeans, hoodies, sneakers. Pete took his hood down, but that was the closest they came to getting dressed up.

            The girl who came in looked like she was about fourteen years old, which made her a little bit suspect, but she carried herself in a way that made no one look twice at her. She slid into a seat across from Andy and started talking immediately.

            “I don’t have all night,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

            “My friend went missing,” Andy said. The girl was eyeing the others warily, and Patrick leaned back in the booth. He had a sinking feeling that this wasn’t going to be a very human-friendly conversation. “He’s half-fae, and we think it might have something to do with the vampires that have been going missing around here.”

            “I doubt it,” the girl said. “It’s only humans and vampires going missing.”

            “Humans?” Andy repeated. “How can you even tell if there’s a string of human disappearances? Are there more than usual?”

            “Probably not,” the girl said. “It would be hard to tell if you weren’t paying attention, but I am.” She glanced at Patrick, then turned her attention back to Andy. “It’s only noticeable because blood- sorry- donors have been going missing.”

            “Really?” Andy said. “What, and none of them have turned up again?”

            “I ran into a human boy I used to see,” the girl said. “The humans aren’t going missing for long, not every time, anyway. But he didn’t remember anything about the two weeks he had been gone. Lost his job.” She didn’t sound incredibly sympathetic to the boy’s plight. “It sounds to me like it’s vampires doing it, because the only thing that makes humans forget like that is compulsion, but with one of the Blood Bats going missing… I don’t know. One vampire couldn’t be doing this. But I haven’t heard about any new groups.”

            The waiter walked up to their table, and the girl waved him by without looking at him.

            “You’re sure it’s vampires?”

            “Obviously I’m not sure,” she said. “But it sounds like it is all I said. And if it’s vampires, they wouldn’t want anything to do with fae,” she added, eyeing Pete with distaste. Patrick was really starting to dislike this vampire.

            “One more question,” Andy said. “Does the name ‘Elijah’ mean anything to you? Especially in relation to Andrea?”

            The girl’s face darkened, and she jumped to her feet.

            “Where the hell did you get that name from?”

            “I just heard it,” Andy said, shaking his head. “What does that mean?”

            “You’re asking me that?” she gaped at him. “Aren’t you a dhampire? Didn’t you and Andrea share a sire?”

            “That’s what she said,” Andy said. “I don’t know anything about it. I never met him. She didn’t even say his name.”

            The girl shook her head and stared at the group of them in disbelief.

            “You know his name now,” she said. “And either he’s long dead, or we’re in a lot of trouble. On the off chance he’s not, don’t contact me again.”

            She stormed out of the restaurant, long black jacket flaring out behind her.

            “Cheerful girl,” Gabe said faintly. “Andy?”

            Andy had slumped back in his booth, looking oddly blank.

            “Okay, well, Elijah isn’t the most common name in the world, but that could still be a coincidence,” Pete said. “Andy, are you doing okay? It could be anything.”

            “Or it could be my sire,” Andy said. His voice was low and intense. “I’d never heard anything about him before, except that he started what Andrea was working on.”

            “Vampire eugenics mastermind,” Joe said. “But he was long dead, right?”

            “Yes,” Andy said. “Yes, absolutely. I mean, I didn’t see the body myself, but I was a preteen, so.”

            “So, if he’s dead,” Patrick said, “It stands to reason someone’s emulating him. We got the name Elijah to find out that it had to do with this whole operation. They’re kidnapping people who worked with him and Andrea, and humans to feed off of, presumably. And I’m willing to bet they kidnapped a faery you knew to get your attention.”

            “They’ve got it,” Andy said darkly. “So what next?”

            No one yet had an answer to that.

            As they walked from one bar to the next with no new information, they talked about what little they did know, picking it over in the hopes of realizing something new.

            “Who’s your friend, anyways?” Patrick asked. He kicked at rocks while they walked down the road. He hadn’t done this much walking in the months they had been on a break, and now he felt out of shape as they covered the city.

            “We’re not friends, really,” Andy said. “I met her briefly during all of the Drake Hotel stuff, and then Maria mentioned her to me again up in Salem. Her name’s Briana, and she doesn’t really like people. Or vampires. Anyone, really. But she’s a good person, and she protects people in Chicago if she sees them getting into trouble.”

            “She seemed a bit standoffish, yeah,” Pete said.

            “Shame she didn’t stick around,” Joe grumbled. “I mean, would it have killed her to give us a little more information on this Elijah dude?”

            “For all we know, maybe,” Andy said. “She was scared, and if he’s really dangerous, maybe giving me that information could put her in real danger.”

            “Still,” Joe said. “I mean, how bad can he be?”

            “I have no idea,” Andy said. “Andrea said he was worse than her, but I imagine she was a little biased.”

            “It stands to reason,” Patrick said, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice.

            They stopped at a couple of other vampire hangouts, but Andy was quickly running out of places to look. None of the others had a clue where to find out information relating to vampires. Patrick thought privately that they ought to look into the very real possibility that this was an issue relating either to fae, or entirely human in origin, but he didn’t say that out loud. They certainly weren’t equipped to go against fae, and in terms of human issues… well, the police had been notified, according to the rest of Bill’s band.

            Patrick and Pete tapped out early that night. At midnight, Patrick claimed he was getting tired. He didn’t like to make a habit of playing on the “poor injured human” image that he was positive his band had of him, but tonight he didn’t care. He wanted to go back to his house, to sleep, to dream of Chicago. When Pete took his hand and squeezed it, Patrick felt a faint stirring of guilt in the pit of his stomach, but he pushed the thought away. It wasn’t as though he was doing anything wrong.

            The house was already dark, and Patricia asleep when Pete and Patrick got in. Patrick continued to insist that he was tired and worn out from the day, though he’d barely been awake twelve hours. Pete smoothed his hair back as Patrick lay down.

            “You seem better today,” Pete said. He had pulled out a book to read by the bedside, clearly not tired yet.

            “I have a feeling,” Patrick said, “That I’m going to feel even better tomorrow.”

            Sleep came quickly. Patrick didn’t attempt to fight it, closing his eyes and focusing on breathing, on relaxing his muscles, on everything Ferrum and Pete’s therapist had told him would help him fall asleep back when he stayed up at all hours to avoid nightmares. He drifted off fast, and though his chest felt constricted when he saw the awful torture room materializing around him, he didn’t panic.

            “Patrick,” Not-Pete purred, but he was just a dream, just a figment of Patrick’s imagination. “Back for more? Did you miss me?”

            Patrick could feel Not-Pete dragging his finger down his chest, but he focused hard on trying to make the dream his own, like he had when Chicago was there.

            “You can’t do anything to me,” he said, sounding braver than he felt. “This is mine.”

            He tried to will the ropes away, pants onto himself, and a brighter light in the room, but nothing changed. Terror started to settle in on him.

            “Patrick,” Not-Pete said. “Sweetie, baby, angel, lover, don’t be so stupid. I can do anything I want.” He pressed his fingers into Patrick’s chest wound, freshly reopened by Patrick. Blood welled up and spilled onto Patrick’s dry skin. Patrick tried to scream, but no noise came out of his mouth.

            “Just because I don’t look like your city doesn’t mean I can’t take him from you too,” Not-Pete said. “In fact-”

            Whatever he was about to say, he never got the chance. In a flash of brilliant sunlight, the room was gone, along with Not-Pete’s horrible voice, the stench of blood, the ropes. Patrick was back in the park, still bleeding for some reason, but dressed.

            “Sorry I’m late,” Chicago said. He sounded out of breath. “There’s this girl on the South Side, she hates spiders and keeps dreaming about them, but never mind that. Are you okay?”

            Patrick ran into Chicago’s arms. It wasn’t quite as good as real life. Chicago didn’t really smell like anything, whereas he had always used to smell like an impossible combination of everything in the city, of diesel and cigarettes, pizza, Malort, and the wind from Lake Michigan. He didn’t feel as solid and warm, but it was still Chicago.

            He reached out and pressed his hand gently against the slow spreading bloodstain on Patrick’s shirt.

            “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. “Because I want to help, but I’m… confused. That guy- he looks like Pete.”

            Patrick pulled Chicago’s hand away from the wound. “There’s more of them, usually. They look like the four of us.”

            Chicago kept looking concerned, but undemanding, and Patrick knew he would never have to explain if he didn’t want to. But to his deep surprise, he wanted to talk about everything.

            “I keep getting nightmares about this thing that happened a while ago,” Patrick said. “These things- the ones that look like us, me and the other guys in the band, they showed up a while ago. Months ago. At first they just fought us, but also, the way they looked was weird because- oh fuck, this might take a while to explain.”

            “We’ve got all night,” Chicago said. “Where do you want to go?”

            “Anywhere with you,” Patrick said. Chicago took his hand, and Patrick leaned into him, then started talking.

            There was a great deal to explain. The way the egrigors looked, what they knew about them, how they were designed to be what the band wanted of themselves.

            “You know,” Patrick said, shrugging a little. “Mine looks the least like me. He’s taller and skinnier and he always wears a suit. He’s just… better looking. Not to mention he’s as strong as about five of Andy put together.”

            “Why does he look so different?” Chicago asked. “The one that looks like Pete, he looks a lot like him.”

            “He looks different because… that’s what I would want to look like,” Patrick said. The words felt sticky in his mouth.

            “Why do you want to look like that?”

            Geez, it was like talking to a four year old sometimes.

            “Because I’m not exactly conventionally attractive,” Patrick said. He gestured to himself, then, when Chicago still didn’t understand, he lifted up his shirt and pointed to one of the scars on his stomach. “FAT”

            “You look incredible,” Chicago said. He sounded offended, his voice making the color rise in Patrick’s cheeks.

            “Yeah, sure, anyway,” he said, and hurried on with the story. How they had been attacked the first time, and then talked to Ryan about what it could be. Chicago seemed to gather the full impact of how powerful the things were that they could beat all four of them that easily, which made the storytelling a bit simpler. Most of the story, however, was something that Patrick was used to telling, recounting to whoever they could to get more information about the creatures. When he got to Chile, however, his voice slowed, and the words turned sticky in his mouth again.

            “They outsmarted us,” Patrick said. “I was poisoned and weak and alone, and they came in and took me somewhere. I don’t know where it was, but it was that room, the tiny room you keep finding me in. I guess I didn’t try fighting harder because. I don’t know. I didn’t think it could happen, or get as bad as it did. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had fought harder, I don’t think, but I still should’ve tried.

            “Anyway, they tied me up, like you found me just then, and they, you know, cut up my clothes with my own knife. Then they started to- the one that looks like me, he started to cut- cut the words.”

            He couldn’t say that the words were cut into him, somehow. It was one thing to say that the egrigors did something, and another to say that they did something to him. It felt like admitting a weakness. On the other hand, Chicago was so outside the realm of normalcy, and Patrick had never been embarrassed around him before. Patrick paused for a long time, and Chicago waited patiently for him.

            “He cut the words into me,” Patrick said. It felt a little like something had dislodged itself in his throat. “And these things- I said they were in our heads. He made me play a guessing game. He kept calling it a game, anyway. He would carve the word somewhere onto my skin, I would try to guess what it was, and every time I guessed wrong he would go over it again. The deep words are the ones I couldn’t figure out. Then at the end I figured out that all of the words were mine. Things I thought about myself.”

            Patrick didn’t look up to see if Chicago was shocked, because if he stopped then at a look of horror on Chicago’s face, he didn’t know if he would be able to continue talking.

            “Then the other three came in. The ones that look like the other guys. And Joe- not really Joe, but you know, the one that looked like him, he had something. Soldering iron, that’s what my doctor thinks it was. And he started to do the same thing, but with the iron instead of a knife, burning the words into me. The others joined in sometimes, but it was mostly the Joe one. The only difference is that those words were, you know, things the guys have thought about me.

            “The Pete-one came in on his own at the end. He put a word on my back with an electric screwdriver. Tried to kill me, but he couldn’t. And he just. Talked to me. It shouldn’t have been that bad, but he talked to me and kissed me and it was like Pete but awful.

            “And in between times they would just leave me in the dark and God, that’s such a stupid thing to get to me, but half the nightmares are just that, just being alone in the dark and hearing my blood dripping off the side of the table and bracing for whatever horrible thing came next. That was the thing I couldn’t handle because half the time I thought they’d come back and do something worse, and the other half I was just fucking terrified that they’d leave me there forever. Sick and freezing and bleeding out in the dark. And now- now I sleep with the lights on, like a little kid, because every time it gets too dark to see I either think they’re coming back or I’m stuck in that room forever, and-”

            He finally found that he couldn’t go on. His voice wasn’t refusing to cooperate, as it was really just a dream, but he couldn’t say anymore. He felt drained, empty and suddenly exhausted.

            “I’m scared all the time,” he whispered, still not looking up at Chicago. “I have nightmares and panic attacks and everyone treats me like I’m going to break, and I can’t even be mad at them for it, because I’m just as fragile as they think I am. It’s so fucking stupid because I’ve been hurt before. All of us have been kidnapped and tortured and hurt before but this time I just can’t handle it. The light went out in a fight the other day and I just froze. I couldn’t move. I’m twenty-fucking-four and afraid of the dark!”

            “Patrick,” Chicago said. Patrick looked up at long last. His eyes felt frustratingly watery, but he wasn’t quite crying. Chicago, to his relief, didn’t look pitying. “It’s okay.”

            Patrick found that he didn’t have it in him to argue. They had stopped walking a while ago, but the two of them ended up sitting down on the grass, and Patrick laid his head in Chicago’s lap. Chicago hummed quietly to himself, a tune that sounded suspiciously like Sugar We’re Going Down, but Patrick couldn’t be sure.

            “Incidentally,” Chicago said after what felt like a very long time, “You’re not fragile. And I highly doubt anyone who’s ever met you thinks you are, especially after surviving that.”

            “I had no choice but to survive,” Patrick said. “They couldn’t kill me.”

            “Huh,” Chicago said. “I guess you have a point. I still don’t think you’re more fragile than the average human.”

            It wasn’t even a little encouraging, but it made Patrick laugh. He hadn’t exactly let everything off his chest, hadn’t even touched the topic of the kid Pete might be having (kid!) or the panic attacks. But he could wait for all of that.

            “Anyway, we can go back to thinking about other stuff, if you like,” Chicago said. “You want to get dream pizza? It smells amazing, but you can’t really eat it.”

            “You can’t eat in a dream?” Patrick asked.

            “Nah, I wish,” Chicago said. “I mean, I love you, and I miss you all the time, but sometimes I think what I miss most about being human is deep dish pizza and Mountain Dew.”

            Patrick sighed. Chicago talking about pizza was very reminiscent of another man Patrick loved. “I think I have a type,” he said.

            Chicago didn’t seem to get the joke, but he smiled anyway. The two of them sort of ate pizza, and Chicago was right, it was more like a memory of eating pizza, but it was still nice. Chicago told stories about strange dreams he had dropped in on in the city, about what the city had felt like, music he still heard buzzing through the radio because music was connected to the cities it was played in. He loved all the songs he had heard from Infinity on High, and he giggled a little when he talked about it.

            “I hear your ‘one night and one more time’ song all the time,” Chicago said. “I love it.”

            “Is it your favorite?” Patrick asked.

            “Every song of yours is my favorite,” Chicago said.

            Patrick felt warm and only a little bittersweet as he felt himself fading into wakefulness again, blinking slowly as Chicago’s face faded out and was replaced by Pete’s.

            “Morning, baby,” Pete said. He was still a polite distance away from Patrick, but he looked so loving and hopeful that it made Patrick’s chest hurt.

            It wasn’t like he was cheating on Pete, Patrick thought. It wasn’t like he and Chicago did anything. They held hands, but Patrick could hold hands with Joe without it being weird.

            If he pushed Pete down onto the bed and kissed him with more fervor than usual that morning, it was just because he loved Pete very, very much.

            The band plus Gabe had already ordered and sat down at Moonstruck Cafe (not a werewolf pun, according to Joe, just a normal human chocolate and coffee shop) before anyone explained to Patrick what their plan for the day was. He had assumed it was something to do with vampires, just by nature of everything over the past few days relating back to the vampire mystery. Instead, to his surprise, Jon Walker walked through the front door, looking anxious.

            “Jon?” Patrick asked. Once he saw them, Jon looked relieved and made straight for their table. He sat down with his arms tightly crossed and looked right at Gabe.

            “Anything?” he asked.

            “Nothing yet,” Gabe said. “Have you heard anything from him?”

            “Nothing,” Jon said. “I’ve been looking all over, asking everyone I still know how to get ahold of, but nobody’s heard anything. You guys don’t know anything at all?”

            “We’ve got a string of vampire and human kidnappings that we think are related to my dead fiancée, but we can’t prove that’s who took Bill,” Andy said. Jon blinked at him a few times.

            “Ryan told you about the eugenics hotel, right?” Pete asked.

            “He mentioned it,” Jon said. “Carmilla’s mom was trying to enslave the human race, right? Ryan and the rest of Panic were in the middle of the shapeshifting demon problem in Vegas at the time, right?”

            “The what now?” Pete asked.

            “Oh, right, sorry,” Jon said. “Yeah, Patrick was kept as a juicebox, the dandies were there, all that stuff. Why do you think that’s related?”

            “If it does have to do with Andrea, there’s a good chance they’re trying to get my attention,” Andy said. “And this would do it.”

            “But-” Jon looked frustrated. “Look, you and Bill are friends, but why would they take him? Why not Patrick or your daughter of someone from Fuck City?”

            Patrick was a little offended that he was the first piece of bait that came to Jon’s mind, but he did his best to shrug it off.

            “Any of us would be pretty hard to take,” Patrick said. “The four of us have been practically glued together for a while, and Fuck City, where Carm is staying, is really well protected. Bill was already in Chicago, and if this is their home base…”

            “Not to mention,” Joe added, “Bill was at the Drake when it burnt down. He was part of that whole thing. Someone might have recognized him.”

            Jon slumped back in his chair, defeated. He, like everyone these days, looked exhausted. Patrick wondered idly if the rest of his band was out here, helping him deal with this, when he had a thought.

            “Ryan,” Patrick said. “Haven’t you asked Ryan where Bill is?”

            “Of course I have!” Jon said. “But he can’t see anything. Sometimes when someone is protected by magic they can be hidden, according to Ryan. We’re flying blind here.”

            “You ever met a vampire around here named Briana?” Andy asked. Jon nodded, looking stunned. “She told us it had to do with Andrea, or, with our sire, but she didn’t want to say anymore. She didn’t want to talk about it yesterday, but if you know where she is, she might be able to tell us more.”

            “Andy,” Jon looked almost devastated. “You don’t know yet, do you? Briana got kidnapped early last night. I used to work the four AM shift at Starbucks. I knew the coffee order she would always get before the sun came out. And I’m not even in the supernatural community in Chicago, but everyone was talking about it late last night. She got taken off the streets not long after dusk. There was a struggle, human police were called- Andy?”

            Andy was standing up, knocking his coffee cup knocked over and spilling the contents across the table. He was shaking, his face dark and angry and painfully reminiscent of Not-Andy, making Patrick look away and focus on catching his breath. He lost track of the conversation for a minute. It wasn’t them, isn’t them, he was safe safe safe just the normal Andy not a threat.

            “-either tonight or tomorrow!” Andy said. “I’ve had enough!”

            “You can’t volunteer us all to be bait,” Pete protested.

            “I’m not,” Andy said. “You can be bait or not, but I’m getting Bill out if I have to do it myself.”

            “I’ll do whatever you need me to,” Jon said, and Gabe nodded in agreement. Patrick wished his sudden, graying-out bouts of panic would stop preventing him from hearing important pieces of information. He really didn’t want to ask what they were talking about. And then, Andy was facing him, looking expectant and harsh.

            Just Andy.

            “I’m…” he began to say “I’m sorry,” to prelude the fact that he had missed the whole thing, that he didn’t know what was being asked of him, but Andy started to look so disappointed that he backtracked at once.

            “Okay,” he said. “Whatever we need to do for Bill.”

            “You don’t have to do this,” Joe said, but Patrick huffed.

            “I can help,” he said. “What’s the, ah, plan?”

            “We’ll go pick up all the stuff right now, get prepped, and head out as soon as it’s dark out,” Andy said. “It could be dangerous.”

            “What an incredible change of pace,” Patrick said sarcastically. He threw his crumpled up napkin onto his empty plate, distantly noting that he had actually finished eating everything, and stood up.

            “You have a stake?” Patrick asked Jon as they walked out.

            “Wha- didn’t you just have breakfast?” Jon asked. “And aren’t you vegetari- oh.” Patrick held up a slim wooden stake that he had stuck in his jeans pocket that morning, and Jon looked flushed as he saw it. “Right. Ah, no, I don’t.”

            “Does your band not fight vampires?” Patrick asked.

            “Not that often,” Jon said. “Ryan and Brendon attract weird stuff.”

            “What, like each other?” Pete asked.

            Prepping for the night to come gave Patrick a better idea of what exactly he had signed himself up for. First they returned to Joe and Andy’s hotel room and distributed wooden stakes to everyone, and then they went to an electronic store in the hopes of finding handheld radios. After trying fruitlessly to explain what exactly it was they were looking for, Andy eventually gave up and reset his number as speed dial two on Patrick, Gabe, and Jon’s phones.

            “Instead of wandering around,” Andy said, “Each of you three stay in your designated location, or within a couple blocks of it. The second something happens, call us, and we’ll be there. If Jon’s right, someone will try to take you, and once we catch up, we can find out where it was they were planning on going.”

            “Assuming we don’t get ripped to shreds in the process,” Patrick added. Andy gave him a look.

            “No one is getting hurt,” he said.

            Patrick didn’t respond to that.

            Gabe and Jon took measures to make themselves more appealing to vampires. Keeping the skin on their necks and wrists bare, drinking a little as the sun started setting outside to “raise the color in their cheeks,” and Gabe even offering to scrape up his hands a little. Patrick offered to do none of the above, to which Andy said that was fine. Patrick had a sinking suspicion that he already knew who the vampires would go after, and when he met Pete’s concerned gaze from across the room, he could tell Pete felt the same way.

            The minute the sun sank below the horizon, Andy ushered them outside. They were on the street before they realized that they hadn’t exactly planned what areas each person was going to cover.

            “I can take Millennium Park,” Patrick piped up suddenly. It was impulsive, but all the memories of Chicago, real and dreamed, made the park feel safer. After dark, he knew that it wasn’t, but it felt that way.

            “Fine,” Andy said. “Try to stay close to the street. You two will probably have to stay in a nearby area…”

            They split off quickly, leaving Pete, Joe, and Andy near the hotel and walking off in opposite directions. Patrick ran his thumb over the base of his stake, and let his other hand rest on the hilt of his knife. He probably should have kept his phone closer than his weapons, but the familiar textures of the old metal on his knife and the wood grain on the stake were a comfort.

            Patrick seemed almost invisible as he walked ever closer to the park. No one on the streets glanced at him, no one was eyeing him to make sure he hadn’t broken down. Patrick couldn’t tell if the sensation was relieving, or lonely, and eventually decided that it mostly felt quiet.

            It was properly dark by the time he got to the park. The sky had turned a deep, rich shade of blue, and the street lamps were buzzing faintly. One of the most eerie parts of this side of Chicago at night was how empty and quiet it was. Even though it couldn’t be ten at night yet, Patrick could count the number of people in sight on one of his hands. It didn’t do much to quell the anxiety building in his stomach.

            Patrick pushed his hands and his weapons deeper into his pockets as he walked, glancing around him from time to time. It was a strange feeling, being bait again, when he’d had such a blanket ban on that for so long. He didn’t like the sensation of just waiting for something terrible to happen.

            He had been walking the length of the park, staying close to the fence, for a good long ways before a terrible thought hit him. Not only was he not as safe as he had hoped he would be when he suggested the park, but he was also alone. Alone meant that at any second the egrigors could come up behind him and take him again and all the nice dreams in the world couldn’t stop them. Patrick spun around, as though he expected the egrigors to be right behind him, but of course, no one was there at all. Discovering that he was entirely alone didn’t make him feel better either. He could feel his heart hammering in his throat, and he took his hand off the knife and grabbed his phone.

            Patrick called Pete on instinct, still walking briskly as he dialed. He hoped that, by not calling Andy, the band wouldn’t come running for what was essentially a false alarm. He just needed someone else, even if they weren’t physically there.

            “Patrick?!” Pete said.

            “Hey,” Patrick said. “Um, sorry, don’t come running yet, I’m fine. But I just. I just needed. It’s stupid, I-” he couldn’t get a whole sentence out, could see the edges of his vision blurring like he was about to pass out.

            Patrick had never had a panic attack before the egrigors tortured him, but now he was so used to them that, even as his heart kicked into high gear, he hated himself for how stupid it all was. Nothing had happened; he was just standing by himself in the dark.

            “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Pete said suddenly, his voice now calm and gentle. He understood. “Breathe with me?”

            Andy and Joe could probably hear Pete, which was just awful, but at least Patrick wasn’t actually going to pieces in front of them.

            “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I-”

            “Just breathe in with me dude, okay?” Pete said. He inhaled noisily, the sound of his breath crackling over the phone, and Patrick closed his eyes and did the same. He breathed out when he heard Pete exhale, and his heart rate seemed to calm down.

            “You can come back,” Pete said after a minute.

            “No,” Patrick said. He was feeling better already. No one in the universe knew him like Pete did, no one else could help his lungs loosen like that. “No, I’m better. I just- it hadn’t hit me that I’d be alone till I was.”

            “It’s okay,” Pete said, and Patrick pressed the phone ever closer to his ear, drinking in the sound of Pete’s voice.

            “Thanks,” he said. It was inadequate, but the best he could do. He opened his eyes to see a trio of people standing too closely in front of him, just barely standing outside the ring of light cast by the street lamp. And something was definitely wrong.

            “Hey, sweetie?” Patrick said. He took a step backward, and the people standing in front of him leaned forward, still keeping just outside of the light. “I think I might have spoken too soon.”

            “Patrick?”

            Patrick cleared his throat. “I’m on Randolph, across from the hospital, and there’s three of them.”

            “We’re on our-”

            Patrick never heard the word “way”, as the vampire in the middle practically flew forward and knocked the cell phone from Patrick’s hand.

            “Remember me, bloodslut?” he asked. Widow’s Peak was baring all his teeth, and Patrick kept his right hand gripped tight around the stake in his pocket.

            “Yeah, remember me?” he asked, and he ripped the stake out. One of the vampire cronies behind him grabbed Patrick’s wrist before he could plunge it into Widow’s Peak’s heart.

            “Ah-ah-ah,” Widow’s Peak said. “Not this time. Tony?”

            The other vampire grabbed hold of Patrick’s other wrist, holding him very, very still. Widow’s Peak walked over to the street light, wrapped his arms around the pole, and with a large-fanged grin in Patrick’s direction, and said: “You don’t like the dark much, do you?”

            And he snapped the light pole in half.

***

            It just HAD to be Patrick. Like, Andy knew it was going to be Patrick. Patrick was his friend, in his band, had the best smelling blood, and was the one Andy least wanted to get kidnapped. So, per the laws of the universe, Andy knew that Patrick was going to be the one who got attacked.

            But damn, he was not happy to relive the experience of Pete being on the phone with Patrick while Patrick was in danger.

            Luckily, they weren’t far, and Andy was a fast runner. He took one look at Pete before sprinting as fast as he could. He’d already heard the street name and he was flying as soon as the call dropped.

            Andy didn’t often run at top speed. He usually let his bandmates keep up with him because getting separated was a bad idea. This case was an exception, and he flew through the blocks separating him and Patrick. But as he ran down Randolph Street, he didn’t see anyone else up ahead of him. The panic was just starting to settle into him when he saw a flutter of movement on the ground up ahead-- the subtle shift of a manhole cover sliding back into place.

            “Like hell,” Andy growled, and he dove at it, ripping the cover aside and jumping down into the storm sewer below.

            Even three against one, it wasn’t a hard fight for Andy. He ripped Patrick out of one of their grasps and shoved him behind his back, then slammed the vampire who had been holding him into the slimy wall, knocking all the air from his lungs. He kicked the second vampire into the sewer water, and caught the third one by his slick black hair, driving his knee into his chest. Andy leaned down into a crouch and snarled, half-feral. Deep in the back of his mind, he realized he hadn’t felt this good in months. When one of the vampires launched at him again, he knocked her even farther back down the long, dark tunnel.

            Andy didn’t realize until then, when he had a reason to actually exert some of his muscles, to finally fucking sink his fists into something, that he was angry. He was furious. Everything that could go wrong had been going wrong for months, and up until that moment, there was nothing he could do about it. And here were three people in front of him that he was completely justified in taking his anger out on.

            Andy could still hear Patrick breathing behind him, which was really all he needed to hear to be sure that he would be fine. Andy could focus on the vampires without having to worry about him. When the long, black haired vampire squared off against Andy, Andy fought with abandon. Like he was doing it for fun, hitting and punching the guy with relish until the vampire’s nose crunched flat against his face. Andy then pinned him up against the wall, still snarling through gritted teeth.

            “I’m going to assume you know who I am,” Andy said. “So let’s not waste time playing dumb. Who are you? Who do you work for? And where were you taking him?”

            “Damen,” the vampire gasped, barely able to speak for Andy’s hand on his windpipe. Behind Andy, Patrick snorted. “I got hired- I don’t know who by. A girl. A human. I don’t know if the place I was supposed to take him even has a name.”

            Andy jammed his hand a little harder into the guy’s throat. He made a pained noise, but offered up nothing else. Andy let him drop to his hands and knees in the sewer water.

            “Fantastic,” Andy grumbled. There was a sound of metal grating on metal, and two splashes next to them as Joe and Pete jumped down into the sewers along with them.

            Damen’s face soured as he took in the sight of the band. Andy straightened his back a little, and watched as the two vampires working with Damen ran off down the empty tunnel.

            “So, new plan,” Andy said. “Pete, call Jon and Gabe, tell them where they are. When they get here, you’re going to take us to your leader.”

            Damen didn’t crack a smile at the wording of Andy’s demand, even though Andy thought it was kind of funny. Instead, he just kept glaring over Andy’s shoulder at Patrick. Like he was something to eat, which, fair enough, to Damen he was, but Andy was in no fucking mood for it. He bared his teeth slightly, and Damen shook droplets of sewer water out of his hair.

             “What makes you think I can do that?” he asked at long last.

             “You were supposed to take Patrick there anyway,” Andy said. “Why not just bring the rest of us along? You’ll still be following orders, won’t you?”

             “Somehow I doubt that’s what ‘Bring the human one back here and you’ll get to snack on him before I pay you,’ would mean,” Damen said. Pete made a noise that would be indiscernible in its anger to anyone that didn’t know him like Andy did. Faced with a similar anger, Andy took a stake and pressed the tip of it into the hollow of Damen’s throat.

             “Take us where you were supposed to take him,” Andy said. “Now.”

             “Fine,” Damen said through clenched teeth. He spun around and started stomping down the line of the sewer, splashing up water with every petulant step. He would be easy to follow at a distance, so Andy took a moment to make sure his band was okay.

             A wave of guilt, warm and sticky and increasingly familiar, washed over him as he caught sight of Patrick. Ashen faced and trembling slightly, Patrick was leaned up against the stone wall, eyes shut. Andy inhaled deeply, and although the sewer smelled metallic and salty, it lacked the familiar, sweet scent of Patrick’s blood. They at least hadn’t bitten him. Andy hesitated, frozen in the moment before reaching out to Patrick. He wanted to touch him, to put a hand on his shoulder and ask if he was okay, but he didn’t want to make him feel any worse. Patrick was trying so hard not to look weak all the time, so desperately hard that it hurt Andy to watch.

             The splashing noises of Damen walking had slowed, but not stopped, and were much further down the tunnel, so Andy swallowed back his hesitation and grabbed Patrick’s arm. Patrick flinched (though really, it was more of a jump than a flinch) backwards, flattening himself against the wall and looking up at Andy with wide eyes.

             “We have to keep moving,” Andy said, his voice coming out a little bit harsher than usual. “Come on.”

             “We- have to- down here?” Patrick asked. He sounded as though he’d just run a mile. The footsteps stopped entirely, but they were far away.

             “Please,” Andy said. Patrick nodded, even though he looked confused, and allowed Andy to take his hand and pull him forward. He stumbled a little, and Andy smelled something wet and sweet as Patrick straightened himself, but then the scent was gone.

             “Had to be fucking vampires,” Patrick muttered. He was trying to make a joke, but his voice sounded so frail that it wasn’t funny, and a nagging little voice in the back of Andy’s head hissed your fault your fault your fault.

             Their timing was excellent, however. Moments after Patrick straightened himself, Gabe and Jon dropped through the hole in the street and splashed down into the sewers with them. Gabe looked fiercely eager and Jon looked equally frightened and determined.

             “C’mon,” Andy said, “I found us a friend.”

             Figuring that Pete could take care of his boyfriend, Andy let his thoughts drift elsewhere while he walked down the dimly lit sewer. Innocuous thoughts at first, like how he could smell the disgusting, rotting waste smell of the Chicago River in the sewers, and that they must be close to it. Thoughts like, no matter how many people there were in Chicago, the city always smelled like baking sewage in the summer rather than the aroma of blood that full vampires assured Andy the city had. Like how Andrea had told him that she loved the diesel-and-oil-and-sewage smell of big cities.

             Andrea.

             Andy knew how stupid it was to think about her. In many ways, he was over what had happened, or at least as over it as he could be. No matter how much Carmilla smiled like her, her smiles didn’t hurt. Andy talked to other girls, he went on dates, he could be introduced to a friend of a friend named Andrea and he wouldn’t flinch. He could remember the happy memories without thinking about the bad, sometimes. But he was never really going to be over her, not all the way, he was sure of that.

             The week had been such a roller coaster of emotions, but Andy was grateful for that, because whenever things slowed down long enough to give him time to think, he thought about her. About how his heart had leapt up into his throat when Joe said that all this had something to do with her, like how it still ached when he saw someone who knew the both of them together.

             And now…

             Damen had said a human girl had told him to kidnap Patrick. But Andy had thought Andrea was human once. Plenty of vampires thought Andy was human, especially if they were thirsty, and it was obvious by the way Damen was salivating over Patrick that he hadn’t properly fed in a while. It was far-fetched, but it all added up. Someone who knew about everything that had happened was orchestrating these kidnappings. Someone who knew Andy well enough to go for Bill, for Briana, to try and kidnap Patrick but not to hurt him. A human girl.

             It could be Andrea.

             The thought was there before Andy could push it down, and it was like his lungs had doubled in size, and there was twice the clean air in the world to take in. Andrea, alive. Was it really sick that the thought made him dizzy with happiness? He shouldn’t be happy, not with her being what she was. But they could try again. Carmilla could have a mother, and Andy wouldn’t let her do anything terrible, but-

             -but she was dead. She was dead and Andy had absolutely killed her, watched her whisper “I love you” with her dying breath and saw her dissolve, washed her blood off of their child. Wanting her back wasn’t going to change anything at all.

             Damen had slowed enough that all of them caught up with him relatively easily. He looked pretty young up close, Andy realized, young and nervous. As they walked, he kept glancing from side to side as though he expected something to jump out at them.

Andy soon realized that Damen had come to a dead stop. He had one eyebrow cocked, raised up against his dramatic hairline. Pale and dark haired, with his oversized canines hanging just over his bottom lip, he looked like the most stereotypical vampire Andy could imagine, and it was admittedly a little unsettling.

            “Did you want to come or not?” he asked. He sounded edgy, but not frightened, not like he feared serious retribution. Andy glanced at Pete, but he couldn’t read the hard expression on Pete’s face. Still, even without the ability to read auras, Andy wasn’t stupid.

            This, he thought, was probably exactly what they wanted. Even if they expected a little more time to prepare, whoever “they” were wouldn’t have gone after Patrick without expecting Andy to follow soon after. Andy didn’t mind the idea of walking into a trap if he could get to the bottom of this.

            It wasn’t going to be Andrea.

            But he was a little hesitant to drag the others down with him. Then again… what was worse? Leading them into a den of vampires, or leaving his band without their strongest fighter in case the egrigors showed up again? He wasn’t sure he had an answer. All he had was a vague sense that no one here would give up their best shot at getting Bill back, even if they knew it was dangerous.

            Besides that, it was a little late to turn back.

            Maybe it was selfish, but Andy nodded, tightened his grip on the stake in his pocket and shifted the scabbard hidden under his hoodie a little. If- when- it came to a fight, anyone who had seen them fighting at the Drake in 2004 would be in for a surprise if they weren’t prepared for a band that had since become much more lethal.

            This close to the vampire who had given them so much trouble, they were quiet as they walked. Andy vaguely noticed that the water, which was nearly up to their knees when they first dropped into the sewer, was getting significantly shallower as they walked, even though it felt like they were walking downward. Andy also realized that he had long since lost track of all the turns they had taken, trending downwards in an endless sequence of lefts and rights.

            By the time he saw a faint light ahead, there was just a thin layer of water under their feet, barely enough to make a splash as they stepped in it. The pale golden light up ahead was indistinct, but even at a distance much brighter than the utilitarian lights on the walls of the sewer. Andy braced himself. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see his band adjusting too: Joe with one hand unnaturally held across his body, Patrick half-crouched, and Pete’s teeth gritted. He couldn’t see Jon and Gabe, couldn’t confirm that they too were preparing for whatever was going to come next, but he at least had faith in his band.

            “I don’t know the names of the ones who were going to collect the bloodslut,” Damen said, without pausing or slowing. His voice echoed too loud against the damp walls. “But they said I could have a taste.”

            “I wouldn’t hold out for that,” Patrick muttered.

            The light up ahead looked like it was emanating from further down the tunnel, but as Andy approached, he realized that it was actually shining through a pair of glass doors, frosted so that he couldn’t make out the room beyond. He suspected it wasn’t going to match the doom and gloom of the rest of the sewers.

            Damen paused in front of the door and held out a hand to them before slipping inside. As soon as the door shut, Andy pulled his long sword out of its scabbard and Joe, thinking in tandem as usual, said: “Weapons out.”

            Only Jon and Gabe really needed the order, and as soon as the flurry of motion behind Andy stilled, he kicked in the glass doors.

            Behind the heavy doors that strangely didn’t shatter from the force of Andy’s kick was a brilliantly lit reception area, not unlike a hotel lobby. Damen looked up from a tense conversation with a woman at the front desk, and Andy glanced up briefly to notice that the source of all the light was an enormous chandelier, exuding dazzling crystal reflections all over the large room that was full of armchairs and coffee tables.

            Andy made straight for the front desk. He brandished his sword, but the women at the front desk merely looked at him, mild and almost bored.

            “You must be Andy,” she said. Andy moved his sword a little closer, feeling as though he must be missing something, but she didn’t so much as flinch.

            “We’ve been expecting you for a bit. My apologies for our delivery boy. Mr. Bradley doesn’t generally work for us, but he sought us out and offered to bring you in for free. He’s a bit… uncouth, but I’m happy to see you all made it here in one piece. I believe the boss wanted to see all four of- ah, sorry, who are the extra two?”

            “Gabe Saporta,” Gabe said. He was holding a small axe a little clumsily, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, but his face was hard and serious. “You’ve got a friend of mine here.”

            “Jon Walker,” Jon said. Andy didn’t even recognize the machete he was holding, so perhaps his band fought monsters on their own more than he thought. “Likewise.”

            “Ah,” the receptionist said. She leaned a little closer to a computer screen, typed in something rather rapidly, and then looked back up to them. “Human, vampire, or,” her nose wrinkled a little in distaste, “Fae?”

            “Fae,” Gabe said. “About yea high, name of William Beckett, disappeared half a week ago, ringing any bells?”

            “I’ll have to check the database for you,” she said. “Would you like to remain down here with me while we look for him? Or would you prefer to go up with your friends?”

            “Are we going up?” Andy asked. He stared her down until she met his eyes, still cool and distant as he pushed the sword as close to her neck as he could without letting the blade touch her skin.

            “I suppose you could kill me if you felt so inclined, Mr. Hurley,” she said. “But I truly wouldn’t recommend it. My boss would be very put out with you, and he’s not the sort of man people like to cross.”

            In truth, Andy didn’t want to kill unnecessarily either, but he wished she would acknowledge that they were a threat. The businesslike approach was making him more and more uneasy.

            “If you take the elevator to your right to the fifty-ninth floor, one of my associates will be more than happy to lead you all to dinner,” she said. “Where I daresay you’ll receive a much more satisfactory explanation.”

            Andy glanced at Joe, expecting some kind of disagreement, but Joe just shrugged.

            “And we’ll all be able to leave? In peace?” he asked. The receptionist merely smiled.

            “Someone upstairs will be able to answer all your questions.”

            It wasn’t a real answer, not anything to go off of, but Andy called the elevator anyway. He kept his back turned to the lobby area, though he continued listening as they waited for the elevator.

            “Damen, if you’re still thirsty, we’d be happy to offer you a drink from one of our willing donors….”

            “I was told to bring him directly to Be-”

            The elevator doors slid open, and the six of them stepped inside, still dripping with rank sewer water.

            “In school, they told us that Chicago wasn’t built on stable enough land for them to put subways underground,” Patrick said as the doors closed and the elevator began its rapid ascent. “But apparently the vampires never got the memo that they were destabilizing the city from below.”

            “Funny enough, I don’t think they care,” Jon said.

            “It’s not everywhere under the city,” Andy said. “Just certain places. Besides, this isn’t a lot of space underground.”

            “No, but if I find out that the Sears Tower is headquarters for the vampire mafia, then…” Patrick seemed at a loss for words.

            As promised, someone was waiting just outside the elevator doors, but this person wasn’t a stranger. Andy couldn’t pinpoint it, but he looked familiar somehow.

            “Fall Out Boy,” the man said. His Russian accent was thick, and his voice was amused. “And… friends. Follow me, if you please. Dinner is about to begin, and it’s high time you met the master.”

            “I know you,” Joe said. The man turned back around, smiling coldly.

            “You murdered my sister a few years ago,” he said.

            Andy gaped at him.

            “Indianapolis,” he said. “You were- in the sewers there, you were taking pregnant women and force feeding them blood and-!”

            And working with Andrea.

            “And you killed Morgan, yes,” he said. “I suppose we never got properly acquainted at the time. My name is Dimitri.”

            “That wasn’t what they called you,” Joe said. He seemed to remember more of it than Andy did, because he couldn’t remember names, just mortal terror. “They called you Di-”

            “I usually reserve nicknames for my friends,” Dimitri said. His tone was cordial, but it was dangerously cold too, and Andy stepped protectively closer to his band. “Please, come with me.”

            Dimitri led them down a very short hallway, his pace brisk and businesslike. He pushed open the large, wooden doors to reveal an enormous dining room. Lit by the same sort of dramatic chandeliers as the lobby downstairs, the room was lavish, all ornately carved dark wood and glittering plates, and one wall that was just made of glass, revealing the shining lights of the city below.

            At the head of the table, directly across the room from Andy, was a man. He was obviously in charge, from his position to his stature, to the way Dimitri bowed his head to him. And he was utterly unfamiliar.

            Andy couldn’t help the sinking in his stomach. He knew Andrea was dead, but still, seeing that the mastermind was this stranger hurt. He only had a moment to be sad, though, because the man stood up and Dimitri’s lowered head turned into a full bow, bent at the knee. The other occupants of the table stood with the stranger, turned to face Andy.

            Andy fixed his eyes on the man at the end of the table. Andy’s first thought was that he was ancient, and then he thought his initial reaction made no sense. The man didn’t look physically older than thirty-five, forty at most. He had ambiguously tan skin and dark eyes, with matching dark hair that was graying at the temples. He didn’t even appear to have wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and yet… Andy couldn’t shake the sensation that the man before him was very, very old.

            Also, that he had been silent for an unnaturally long time.

            “Elijah, I presume?” Andy asked. The man smiled slowly, showing all of his sharp teeth, starkly white against the pale brown skin of his face.

            “Andrew,” he said. “I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to hear that you know of me.”

            “Just Andy,” Andy said. “And you don’t exactly keep a low profile.” He glanced out the window. He hoped they weren’t actually in the Sears Tower, but he didn’t know the Chicago skyline well enough to say exactly where they were. Overlooking the lake, but that could be anywhere.

            “Do you like the headquarters?” Elijah asked. “It’s temporary, but quite fashionable.”

            “Temporary?” Andy asked. “You set up a temporary Ritz Carlton in the sewers?”

            “Borrowed from a friend,” Elijah said. “There are plenty of wealthy individuals in Chicago that like their privacy, not just the undead.”

            Sure, Andy could buy that. He didn’t want to look away from Elijah- it felt unsafe, somehow, like if he turned away it would give Elijah permission to do… something terrible, probably- but he took a few seconds to glance at the others sitting at the table. Most were strangers, lining the table from one end of the long room to the other. But Andy recognized some of the faces. There was a woman with platinum hair and a bored expression that Andy was almost certain he recognized from the Dandies. A man with dreadlocks and dressed very informally that Andy thought he knew from the Blood Bats. The old woman who had been with Dimitri and his sister that night years ago in Indianapolis. And…

            “Briana?” Andy asked. Her head snapped up to him, eyes wide and frightened, and she looked back down almost immediately.

            “I see you have some friends already,” Elijah said. He held Andy’s eye contact for an uncomfortably long moment, then gave a false cough. “Please, sit.”

            Andy did not want to sit down and make them more vulnerable. But then, they were outnumbered nonetheless. He grabbed the edge of the chair and pulled it out, then slowly sat down. His band, Jon, and Gabe moved with him, and the moment they sat down, Elijah sat as well, the rest of the table with him.

            “Dinner?” Elijah said.

            “It’s a little late in the evening for dinner, isn’t it?” Andy asked in a would-be-casual voice.

            “More like early for breakfast for our kind,” Elijah said. “Your kind. Are you thirsty?”

            Elijah lifted and rang a small brass bell next to his plate. Doors on either side of the head of the table opened, and a small stream of people poured out. Waiters and waitresses, he assumed, based on how they were dressed, and so many of them that there was one server for every person seated at the table. None of them were carrying anything.

            The woman standing behind Andy stepped right up beside him, rolled up her sleeve, and held up her wrist in front of him. Andy paled.

            “Um,” he said, and glanced around, realizing that most of the table had already sunk their teeth into the skin of the servers. Not servers, Andy realized, but feeders.

            Elijah refrained as well, and he smiled down the length of the table at Andy.

            “Is she not to your liking?” he asked. “I myself have more refined tastes, I will admit. I’m glad to see you feel the same.” He rang the bell a second time, and one more woman walked in, very young, teenaged, by the looks of it. A beautiful but sullen looking girl walked up to his side.

            “Master,” she said. Her face looked strange compared to all the others feeders, Andy realized. Her eyes were clear, whereas the woman standing behind Andy had unfocused eyes and was starting to whimper.

            “Please,” Andy said in a low voice, almost drowned out by the sounds of slurping and gulping around him. “I don’t- I don’t want-”

            The others with Andy were having similar, hushed conversations with their feeders, all of whom looked deeply distressed. Those who had already been bitten into looked euphoric, eyes rolled back as they reclined against the table.

            But the girl beside Elijah, she looked a little embarrassed, a little nervous, though she was forcing her face into stillness, she kept fidgeting. Elijah took her hand, moved it directly over a large goblet, and tore into her wrist with a lush ripping sound Andy could hear across the room. He watched as her blood trickled out into the cup for a moment, then as Elijah pulled out a cloth bandage and wrapped it around her wrist.

            “Like fine wine,” Elijah said when he saw that Andy was still looking. He swirled the blood around the glass then drank deeply. It took a moment of intense focus, but Andy could, if he tried, smell it from across the room. And it smelled exactly like-

            “Patrick?!” he said, rising halfway out of his chair in panic. He turned to see Patrick sitting still, unharmed.

            “What?” Patrick asked.

            “But!” Andy looked across the room, and Elijah raised the glass to Andy as in a toast.

            “Your health,” he said. “I see you’ve brought thrall of your own, if you prefer to drink that.”

            “I brought friends with me,” Andy said coldly. “But- why does she smell-?”

            “Like Patrick?” Elijah asked. “Yes. You miss out on a lot when you deny what you truly are. I’m sure Pete can sympathise. I’ve heard a rumor of his progeny recently.”

            “I don’t deny what I am,” Andy said. “Why does she smell-”

            “The vegan vampire,” Elijah said, voice full of derision. “Who fights other vampires. A superhero, a vampire with a soul. Andy, you read like the back cover of a cheap paperback. And the stories about you are just as common. Do you really waste your thrall’s blood like that? The stories they tell about you… well, I hoped to get to know you a bit better this evening.”

            “I don’t have thrall,” Andy said. “I don’t even know what you mean by thrall. Like a feeder?”

            “No,” Elijah said. “And I do detest modern terminology. I mean thrall. Devoted humans who want nothing more than to keep you serviced in every way possible. Though, I suppose Patrick isn’t quite thrall. And I would never dream of insulting the fair folk or shapechangers like that. But perhaps the other human.”

            “The other human is here for his friend,” Jon said.

            “And you haven’t explained why she-”

            “We can discuss dinner later,” Elijah said. “Speaking of, you can leave,” he spoke a little louder, and the humans left the room just as quickly as they had come in. Andy stared down at the glimmering plates, obviously just sitting there for show. None of the guests there ate food, no one but Andy and his band.

            “Now,” Elijah said. “I’ve heard many stories about you over the years, but I’d like to get them right from the source. Andy, why don’t you introduce me to your… friends.”

            “It sounds like you already know them,” Andy said.

            “Yes, but I’d like a bit more formality, if you don’t mind,” he said.

            Andy did mind, but while they were outnumbered, he might as well play nice.

            “Pete,” he gestured. “Joe, Patrick, Gabe, Jon. I’m in a band with those three. We do typical rock band things, such as play sold out arenas and save the day from villains.”

            “And get literally torn to shreds by your insecurities, so I’m told,” Elijah said.

            “Who the hell told you that?” Andy asked. Elijah waved a hand, sipped from his glass again, leaving his upper lip stained red.

            “Never mind that,” he said. “Do they have last names? Interests? Special talents?”

            “They can speak for themselves,” Andy said.

            “Of course, I didn’t mean to offend,” Elijah said. “As I said, I make an effort to stay on excellent terms with fair folk. Pete, I’m delighted you and Andy get along so well. And I think vampire and shape changer friendships are far too rare. I’ve always been on the side of allying vampires and werewolves.

            “And then, you’ve all decided to take up careers as musicians and monster fighters, a somewhat time honored tradition. One of my other, less successful experiments took up a similar position to yours, though he was singing rather than drumming.”

            “Am I a successful experiment?” Andy asked. He felt venomous, but he was pretty sure his voice was shaking.

            “The second most successful I’ve ever had,” Elijah said. “And I suppose, on that note, you have questions for me?”

            “A few,” Andy said.

            “Then come with me,” Elijah said. He stood up and beckoned them to the door, but Andy stopped, caught by a pleading look on Gabe’s face.

            “No, first,” Andy said. “I want to know where my friend is. Bill. He’s half fae.”

            “You’re in no position to make demands,” Elijah said.

            “Yet here I am, demanding it,” Andy said. “I want to see him and I want make sure he hasn’t been harmed, and then he’s staying with us, or I won’t go another step. Got it?”

            “Andy,” Elijah stepped closer to him. “We can keep up the pleasantries, or this can get quite nasty. I promise you, your friend is fine, and your fae can verify. But we have a schedule to keep. No please, follow me.”

            Andy followed, glowering, and didn’t look back at Gabe or Jon. He felt guilty, but he wasn’t being given much of a choice in this situation.

            Elijah led them into a parlor-like room just off the large dining room. The space was incongruent with the large skyscraper they had to be inside. They should have been moving from meeting room to executive office, but this room was warm, wood panelled, and had a fireplace crackling at one end. The room was entirely warm and comfortable, lit by candles and filled with overstuffed armchairs. But the lavishness of it all only served to make Andy more unsettled. This was not a transitory base camp, this hadn’t been set up overnight. Whoever exactly they were dealing with had an enormous lair hiding in plain sight roughly six hundred feet over the city.

            Another thing that should have been comforting - after the last of them stepped through the door and it was shut behind them, Elijah was alone with six of them. Yet, somehow Andy thought that was another quiet show of arrogance. He didn’t presume to think they were safe just because they momentarily outnumbered him.

            Elijah sat down in a chair in front of the fire. The light glimmered brown and orange on his skin, and he leaned forward onto his knees.

            “Where would you like to begin?” he asked.

            “Who are you?” Andy asked.

            “My name is Elijah,” he said needlessly. “The first of that name, so far as I’m aware.”

            “That seems unlikely,” Joe interjected, his voice steady, but with an undercurrent of some darker emotion.

            “Unlikely, but not impossible,” Elijah said. “I am very, very old, Mr. Trohman. The oldest person I’ve ever met, though I take it one of you has a father older than myself.”

            “Metaphysical sperm donor,” Pete said. Elijah smiled indulgently at him, then raised the goblet to his lips again, a cup Andy hadn’t realized he had carried in with him. His upper lip was coated in blood.

            “I’ve lived the course of many human lifetimes, and as such, I’ve lived a great deal of lives. I rebelled against what I was, and then I created companions for myself. I’ve murdered with wild abandon and saved the earth in turn. When you have eternity, you feel the need to shake things up a bit.

            “But I’ll assume you don’t want my entire history. We’d be here for a very long time if you did. Instead, I’ll move on to how I pertain to you, shall I?”

            “If you don’t mind,” Andy said.

            “The longer I lived, the more frustrated I became about my inability to see the sun. Incredible, how a creature can be so much greater than humans in every way but one. Our only drawback is sunlight. You know there are some unfortunate creatures that got themselves trapped at the poles of the earth, stuck inside for months, unable to travel? It’s a desolate life. But I determined that, given how strong vampires are, how relatively little they need to consume, if they could overcome their one weakness, they would be unstoppable.

            “I started working on this project nearly a century ago, actually,” he said. “But I didn’t yet know how to go about doing it. You see, you can’t turn someone into a vampire just a little. I thought maybe young vampires could be trained to get used to the sun, and it’s… almost possible. I don’t think any of those men would be very happy with me, were they still alive, but I was onto something.

            “I then wondered what would happen if you fed a human vampire blood, but never drank from him. Obviously nothing happens with the inverse, but I thought it could be possible. I was closer still. I made thrall that were stronger and more devoted than had ever been seen before. But they weren’t vampires.

            “Ten years before you were born, I turned my sights to pregnant women. There was something there, perhaps, a transfer of fluids that was both more and less than the exchange of blood used to turn humans. It would involve sacrificing the mother, of course, but if it worked, it would really be something.

            “How much do you know about the turning practice?”

            It took Andy a moment before he recognized that the question was meant for him. It took him a bit longer to work up an answer.

            “Vampire drinks a human’s blood, then the human drinks the vampire’s blood,” he said. “And… that’s it.”

            “You don’t know anything else?” Elijah asked. He sighed. “I suppose that’s only to be expected. The process is rather quick, actually. The human body is, shall we say, primed for the change as soon as vampire venom is in their veins. Once they start drinking, the process is almost immediate. Which made the change difficult to transfer. I was hoping for a delay from mother to child, but it happened almost as quickly as the initial change. That, or I would try to change the mothers only part of the way and see if it would transfer stronger to their children. But no such luck. The infants would turn, rendering them immortal and useless, or they would be born completely human. But I suspected that I was on to something, if only I could get the timing right.

            “Eventually, I did just that. Of course, I kept tabs on all my living experiments, but then Andrea was born. She craved blood and had teeth sharp enough to cut through skin to get it, and she slept in the sun, basking in the light. I hadn’t felt as moved in over a hundred years as I did when I saw her, drinking and living, perfect as she was. You knew her, you loved her. You knew how special she was.”

            Andy didn’t really trust himself to reply to that, so he just jerked his head, not quite a nod, but a sign for him to go on.

            “After she was born, I turned four more women in the exact same way, each exactly as pregnant as Andrea’s mother had been. But I was… too eager in my efforts. Rushing when I should have been slow and meticulous. A few thousand years should teach a man patience, but no one ever really learns the lessons they need most, wouldn’t you agree?

            “I had, up until that point, been keeping careful writings on all my experiments. I had documented everything, kept a focused and scientific approach to the whole affair. In my haste, I ceased to do that, and I fear I led my followers terribly astray as a result of that. All the hurry did no good, at any rate, because two of those women died. The transformation does not always take, and if it is done sloppily, it is even less likely to work.

            “Your mother, however,” he said, his gaze leaving the middle distance to zero in on Andy. “She was different. Strong. I knew from the start that her offspring would last. When I turned her-”

            “Stop,” Andy said. Elijah cocked his head to the side, politely curious. “I don’t need to hear this, and I don’t want to hear you gloat. I don’t care about your side of her story. You turned her, and I know who I became. What about the rest of it?”

            “Well,” Elijah seemed to be enjoying telling his story. “Another child survived, another dhampir like yourself and Andrea. His mother was, shall we say, ill-suited to vampiric life? She died, shortly thereafter, and he was swept up in the system of social workers and state employees paid to move him from one house to another his whole life. I tried to reach him, to raise him as I was raising Andrea, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get ahold of the right sort of person to compel, and eventually I lost track of him. Whatever happened to the world’s only feral dhampir, I can’t say. But I didn’t despair, because I had a new plan.

            “You think that I’m a monster, I suspect, but I don’t kill for fun, I don’t kill at random. I have no qualms with killing, but I don’t do it lightly. The way in which I was creating dhampires was unsustainable. It would create a lot of unnecessary death, or a great surplus of female vampires, neither of which was a good long term option. I did, of course, plan on creating more dhampires however I could, but I wondered if there was a better way. If they had another advantage inherent in humans but lacking in vampires.

            “I speak, of course, of the ability to reproduce. Turning another is similar, in some ways. It is a rebirth, and many sires form an emotional connection like that of a parent to their fledglings. But it isn’t true reproduction, one of the only things vampires are incapable of. Dhampires, though... dhampires might be able to outshine vampires in another way as well. I had a boy and a girl of roughly the same age, so there was a perfect experiment just waiting for me. All I needed was time.”

            “Ahem,” Patrick cleared his throat and raised his hand. Elijah looked properly stunned at the interjection. “Yeah, sorry to interrupt, not really, but you know, so you said no one had ever created a half-vampire before you?”

            “Yes,” Elijah said. He looked thunderstruck as he stared at Patrick.

            “Right, okay, so then where did the name come from?” Patrick asked. “Dhampir? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t coined in 1980.”

            “Some creatures of myth are only legends after all,” Elijah said. “People have always considered blends of humans and vampires to be a very romantic idea. Throughout Victorian literature-”

            “Patrick has a point,” Joe said. “In my experience, I’ve noticed that most myths have a base in truth.”

            Elijah’s face hadn’t changed, but his eyes seemed cold.

            “If such a creature had ever existed before,” he said, “I have neither met nor heard of it. And at my age, that’s a very difficult thing to accomplish.

            “So, I focused my efforts into raising Andrea. I wanted to have similar influence over your childhood, but your mother was a difficulty I hadn’t foreseen. Still, for a few years, things were good. I was well-suited to raising children, I discovered. I loved Andrea as my daughter.

            “Then, of course, my past came back to haunt me. That’s always the way of things, isn’t it? The more of yourself you put into the world, the more enemies you make.

            “We were being followed, and much as I tried to protect Andrea, I knew that this person- one of your friends from Salem, actually, nasty girl- would never leave us alone, not so long as I was alive. I let the girl kill me, or at the very least, let her think she killed me. To make the story stick, I knew I had to disappear for a while, convince the whole world of my death.”

            Andy was suddenly and forcibly reminded of the previous time he had heard a version of this story, when he was standing next to Andrea in the hospital room, holding his newborn daughter. The ache in his chest throbbed, but didn’t worsen.

            It took him a moment to realize that Elijah had paused, but as soon as he did, Andy pressed more questions onto him.

            “How do you convince someone that they’ve killed you?” Andy asked.

            “You’ll understand when you’re older,” Elijah said with a dry humor. He then shook his head, looking amused by himself as he turned his gaze to the distance. “No, it’s a talent that certain vampires possess, the old and the powerful. Have you ever read Dracula?”

            “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Andy said. Elijah’s eyes narrowed, but Andy leaned back in his seat.

            “Spare me the book club?” he said. “What is it that you do?”

            “With a bit of careful planning,” Elijah said, some annoyance beginning to show on his features, “And the ability to transform oneself, one can easily give the appearance of turning to dust, even if they haven’t died.”

            “So, Andrea saw you turn to dust, as did your would-be murderer,” Andy said. “And then, what, you went into hiding for a decade?”

            “That’s the gist of it, yes,” he said.

            “And you haven’t really answered the first question,” Andy said. “Who are you?”

            “Sometimes a leader, a warrior, a teacher, a prophet, a villain, a hero, but first and foremost, a philosopher,” he said.

            “Is it possible for you to give me an answer that isn’t totally full of shit?” Andy said.

            “In regards to your life, I am a scientist,” Elijah said. “And in many ways, something like a father to you.”

            “Please never say that again,” Andy said as politely as he could manage. He decided to give up on that topic and move on to other questions. “Okay. The girl, earlier. Her blood smelled like Patrick’s. Are they related?”

            “Not to my knowledge,” Elijah said. “That sort of thing doesn’t run in families.”

            “What sort of thing?” Andy snapped, impatient.

            “The sanguine,” Elijah said. “Humans with abnormally delectable blood. I used to be lucky to come across a few in the span of a century, and here we each managed to find one. Lucky you didn’t kill him, as young and untrained as you were meeting him.”

            “The sanguine, did you call them?” Andy asked.

            “It’s not a real name,” Elijah waved his hand flippantly. “Just a broad means of categorization. Humans are a very large species, and certain types of them have their own strengths and weaknesses. But I noticed very early on that some humans-- very few, mind you-- smelled different from the other, a bit like fae, but with unpolluted sweetness. Patrick has that brand of sweetness in his blood, as does my ward. I make a habit to have one such human on hand at all times. Not only do they taste so much better that they’ve spoiled me on regular humans, but I find, personally, that they make me stronger. Or had you not noticed?”

            “Do you know what they are?” Andy asked. He wasn’t especially concerned, but he could feel tenseness radiating off of Patrick as he sat next to him.

            “Human, like I said,” Elijah snorted. He turned to look at Patrick. “What, disappointed? Shocked? One in a thousand oysters may have a pearl within and yet there is nothing remarkable about that oyster. The taste of a human’s blood says nothing about their character or physical nature. Inexperienced vampires want to drink from pretty young virgins, but some of the most beautiful girls taste absolutely vile, and I once knew a four-hundred-pound monk who tasted pure and exquisite. In my experience with humans, tasting as you do is probably more of a hindrance than a help.

            “I will say, though, that I have found that the better their blood tastes, the harder a human is to compel. I imagine you must be a very stubborn person, Patrick.”

            “You have no idea,” Patrick said drily.

            “At any rate,” Elijah drained the last of his cup and set it aside. “Surely you’re still curious about me.” His attention was fully focused on Andy once again.

            “Where are we?” Andy asked. The corner of Elijah’s mouth ticked upwards, almost a smirk.

            “Water Tower Place,” he said. “Borrowed it from a banshee friend.”

            “Seriously?”

            “The Irish have a lot of stake in Chicago, but I’ve a lot of social capital to offer in return.”

            “Fantastic,” Andy said. “What do you want with me? You don’t seem that interested in my charming personality.”

            “Andy,” Elijah leaned forward, sudden intensity in his eyes. “Isn’t that obvious? I want to study. I want to see the fruits of my experiment. I discovered that in some ways, I can think of myself as a grandfather. I want Carmilla.”

            In one fluid motion, Andy was standing up. He held the point of his sword directly under Elijah’s chin, his breathing surprisingly even. There was no panic in him, only an anger that was icy cold.

            “I’m afraid that isn’t going to happen,” Andy said.

            “Sit down, son,” Elijah said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt. Of course, I would never do anything to harm your little one, Andy. You have nothing to worry about. I’ve been waiting for her for a very long time. As a show of good faith, I’ve harmed no one you’ve brought with you today. I wouldn’t even presume to keep her, given how attached you’ve grown to the girl. I just want to meet her, study her for a while, if possible. Surely you wouldn’t deny me the chance to meet the true outcome of all my labors?”

            “You know, a lot of people have helped to raise Carmilla, and you’re not on that list,” Andy said. “So, I would say it was nice to meet you, but it wasn’t. We’ll be going now.”

            “Andy,” Elijah sighed like Andy had disappointed him. “Don’t be silly. I’m giving you a very kind offer right now, and it would be wise of you to take it. We can either cooperate, in a deal that would accommodate you quite nicely, or we can do this by force.”

            Andy wasn’t the sort to banter with his enemies, so he didn’t say anything in response, and instead took his sword and swung. He meant to slice through Elijah’s neck, to commit the murder that he had thought happened nearly a decade ago, but the sword barely passed an inch deep into the other vampire’s flesh. Elijah glanced up, one eyebrow raised in an almost bored expression.

            “That wasn’t a very clever decision,” he said mildly. He wrapped his hand around the blade and pushed it back out, barely exerting himself but sending Andy stumbling.

            “Now,” he said, getting to his feet. The cut and bloody skin from Andy’s attack began to stitch itself back together in front of his very eyes, and all Andy could do was stare in disbelief. With his hand still curled around the blade of Andy’s sword, blood trickling from his palm and running down the length, Elijah yanked the sword out of his grip and hurled it across the room. The sword spun through the air before lodging itself deep in the wood panelling of the far door. As it did, Andy heard a soft hiss of pain come from Patrick.

            Andy spun around and saw Patrick pull his hand down from his face, the tips of his fingers stained red. They were all standing, holding their weapons, but Elijah looked entirely at ease.

            “Take them downstairs,” Elijah called.

            Doors in three out of the four walls flew open, the hoard of vampires reflected in the dark glass windows of the fourth wall.

            One glance told Andy they were outnumbered, but he sprinted across the room and ripped his sword from the door anyway, joining his band in defense.

            The fight, if it could even be called that, didn’t last long. From all around him Andy could hear the clattering of weapons falling to the floor, grunts of indignation, and before he could turn his sword on anyone else, all of his companions were being held in place by vampires. He turned to face Elijah, whose only sign of injury was the dark stain of blood on his collar.

            “Downstairs, if you please,” he said. “Leave my son with me.”

            The vampires-- too many of them for Andy to keep track of, dragged the others out of the room till he was left alone with Elijah.

            “Do what you will, but you will never get your hands on my girl,” Andy said. “You have no claim to her.”

            “I created her parents,” Elijah said. “By proxy, she is my greatest creation. And as such, I have a right to her.”

            “Like hell you do,” Andy said.

            “Then your friends can suffer and rot,” Elijah said. “When you are as old as I am, you’ll find that time is something you have in abundance. Half my court is already salivating over one of your friends. So, while my hospitality can be considered to be extended to you indefinitely, I suggest you hurry it up for their sakes.”

            To Andy’s disbelief, Elijah sat back down. He picked up a book by the side of his chair and began to read. Andy stood there for a moment, lost for what to do.

            “What are you going to do with me?” he asked. Elijah glanced up at him.

            “Go where you will,” he said. “I’m tired, and I planned on resting for a while. You’re free to explore the compound or to leave. I will warn you, we are mostly confined to this level and the sub-basement you came through, so try not to wander into some poor, unsuspecting fellow’s office.

            “We’ll be keeping your friends until you bring me Carmilla,” he said. With that, he returned to his book, an air of finality surrounding the statement. Andy felt suddenly and unbearably alone.

            Exhausted but unwilling to rest, Andy decided he would give himself five minutes to sit with his head between his knees in the hallway and wallow. Then five minutes became ten, ten became thirty, and before he knew it an hour had passed and he hadn’t done anything. He was outnumbered and alone, but there was no way he would give up Carmilla, not for a week or even a minute. However, he was running very low on plans that could be executed by him alone. He also had the needling reminder in the back of his head that, so long as he was alone, something even more worrying than a band of vampires could get to him.

            Eventually, he forced himself to get up. The first room he walked into was blissfully unoccupied, and devoid of the floor to ceiling windows overlooking Chicago. He sank down into a chair and checked his phone first. He had about thirty missed texts from his band, all varying degrees of “We’re okay and imprisoned, how are you?” Knowing that he could text them was a great comfort, but not his first priority.

            Andy called Matt. It was around one or two in the morning, he hadn’t checked, but Matt still answered almost immediately.

            “Emergency?” he asked at once.

            “Trying to prevent one,” Andy said. “Look, you’ve got Carm, right? Don’t let her out of your sight.”

            “What’s up?”

            “Long story,” Andy said. “And I’m not in the best place to tell it. Just please, please keep her safe for me, okay?”

            “I always do,” he said. “But-”

            “Thank you,” Andy said fervently. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

            He hung up abruptly, then called his mom.

            “What do you know about the man who bit you?” Andy demanded before she was finished saying hello.

            “Sorry?”

            “Elijah,” Andy said. “The one who turned us, what do you know about him?”

            “Why are you asking now?” she asked. Andy wanted to scream-- there wasn’t any time to explain, all he needed was enough information to fight back.

            “He has my friends and he wants my daughter,” Andy all but shouted. “I need to know anything I can, anything that can help me get by him.”

            “I don’t know much,” she said. “God, he- he’s very old, I know. I spent a few days with him, just before I gave birth to you. He had a room, I don’t remember much of it. But he explained what was going to happen to me, what I was going to become. He tried not to let me see his face, but I learned to recognize him anyway. I learned his name and his face and I made sure that he never got to you. You were safe in the daylight, and almost always around me at night, up until I heard that he was dead. And he-”

            “Definitely isn’t dead,” Andy said. “So he’s definitely still susceptible to sunlight?”

            “Yes,” she said. “Carmilla, is she okay?”

            “She’s fine, for now,” Andy said. “I just need to figure out how to get everyone else out into daylight.”

            “Sweetheart,” his mom sounded horrified, her voice uneven. “Do you need my help? What can I do?”

            “I’ve got it,” Andy said. “Or. I’ll figure it out.”

            “Sweetie-”

            “Check in on Matt and Carm,” Andy said. They were fine, he was pretty sure, but he knew she would want something to do. “I’ll be okay. I love you.”

            He hung up without saying a proper goodbye, checked his phone battery- twelve percent.

            Andy took some more deep breaths. He didn’t have the time to just sit there feeling sorry for himself, but he needed it, needed a moment to combat the sensation that he was drowning. He also really needed to either preserve his battery life or go back to the hotel and get a charger, but the idea of leaving his friends behind was unbearable.

            Instead, he hit redial on Pete’s number. It didn’t ring once.

            “Andy,” Pete’s voice came out oddly, more inhale than exhale. To Andy’s surprise, just the sound of Pete speaking made him feel a little bit better. Some small warmth in the fact that he was not completely alone.

            “Pete, are you okay?” Andy asked.

            “We’re fine,” Pete clarified. “Patrick and Gabe and Joe- we’re all fine.”

            “Really?” a disgruntled voice said from somewhere on Pete’s line. Pete sighed.

            “We are a little banged up and some of us are handling it better than others,” he clarified. “Also, Bill’s down here.”

            “Where is down here?” Andy asked.

            “Sublevel,” Pete said. “I didn’t see the number, but back in the sewers. But are you okay?”

            “Fine,” Andy said miserably. “Completely fine. Okay, so did you just take the elevator? Because if you did, I can be down there in…”

            Andy didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence. He hadn’t heard anyone come up behind him, but suddenly there was a hand pressing his phone down, not smacking it out of his hands, but very insistent. The hand felt too warm to be a vampire, too strong to be human.

            Andy looked up and around his shoulder, already certain of who he was going to see.

            Not-Patrick leered down at him, like he was pleased to see Andy. Andy could hear Pete asking where he went from his phone speaker, but his mouth had gone somewhat dry.

            It was dangerous to be alone.

            “Poor little vampire,” Not-Patrick said, and God, but Andy had forgotten how his voice sounded. How deep and smooth it was, commanding authority with an edge of malice. “Lost and afraid, but never scared for yourself.”

            “I usually have nothing to be afraid of,” Andy said.

            “Andy who is that?!” Pete’s voice came from the phone. The egrigor picked up the phone off the ground and turned it over in his hand before holding it up to his ear.

            “Andy’s a little busy right now, Pete,” Not-Patrick said. Andy didn’t hear a reply before the creature ended the call with a little more force than simply pushing a button warranted. He handed the phone back to Andy.

            “Tell me,” Not-Patrick said, then he swooped down to Andy’s level, one hand pinning Andy up against the wall by his hair. “What’s a man like you afraid of?”

            “Heights,” Andy said, barely a whisper with his mouth as dry as it was. “But you’re not actually that much taller than me, so.”

            Not-Patrick didn’t react at all. Instead, lightning quick, he slashed across Andy’s chest with a knife. It wasn’t a serious wound, but it was enough to tear his shirt and draw blood. Andy felt the hot blood running down his skin more than he felt the sting of the cut. Against his own wishes, he recoiled, pulling further back against the wall and away from the black-eyed monster who wouldn’t stop staring him down.

            “I’m not going to make you suffer today,” Not-Patrick said. “I don’t quite know how yet. But I will. And in the meantime,” he stood up and wiped what looked like a Swiss Army Knife on his suit pants, “I hear that blood loss makes you thirsty.”

            Reflexively, Andy grasped at the wound on his chest. Blood had completely saturated the lower half of his t-shirt. When he looked back up, Not-Patrick was gone.

            His phone was ringing, and he suspected it wasn’t the first time Pete had called in the thirty or so seconds since the call had abruptly ended, but Andy’s ears were still ringing. It was stupid to be freaked out, but something about Not-Patrick’s presence was just too much.

            “ANDY!”

            “I’m fine,” Andy said. He hated how breathless and wheezy his voice had become, suddenly wheezy as well as too fucking high. “I- did you- elevator?”

            “Just down to a sublevel and through a hall, but dude-“

            “I’m on my way,” Andy said.

             Bloody, shaking, and lacking a decent plan, Andy traced his way back through the rooms till he found the elevator again. There was only one basement level listed, but that seemed like as good a place as any to start.

             But that basement seemed like the sort of place the public could easily go, during the daytime, at least. There was a softly burbling fountain, poison green plants, and a distinct after hours feeling about the smooth stone room Andy found there. He imagined that to get much lower he would need a special key, unless he found another option.

             At least he had the building to himself until the sun rose. He had enough time to look around and figure out his plan.

             Soon, he found a maintenance door that he was able to kick down, tough luck for whoever came in to work the next day. He left the lock broken and mangled as he pushed the door open. The door opened up to a hallway, filled with more doors. These thankfully weren’t locked, and Andy had the chance to look into each one of them. At the very far end of the hall, a door opened to a dimly lit staircase. He opened his phone (down to nine percent) and started making his way down the stairs.

             Andy descended into the gloom of the basement, dark enough that even he was never able to see more than a few steps ahead at a time. The steps were made of stone, rough and well worn, and he didn’t know whether that was a choice of aesthetic or a sign that they were old. He was approaching the bottom of the stairs when he heard what sounded like far off singing.

            “Reaching out… touching me… touching yooouuu-” someone was singing, their voice wafting up the stairs.

            “Sweet Caroline-”

            “Bwah bwah bwah,” Joe’s voice joined in, more shouting than singing.

            Just before Andy stepped off the staircase and into the room, he heard an exasperated woman’s voice say: “Would you please shut up?!”

             Some days, it felt as though nothing could shock Andy. He thought he had seen all there was to see, that all the strangeness in the world had a limit and he had found its boundaries. Often, he was proven wrong.

             It appeared that, under a major metropolitan skyscraper, there was a medieval dungeon. One lone torch flickered on the wall (like, an actual torch, Andy realized, a piece of well-worn wood with flaming rags wrapped around the end of it) and opposite that, there were jail cells composed of metal bars. The floor was made of dirt and there were what looked like instruments of torture hanging from the walls.

            Pete leapt to his feet, eyes wide as he caught sight of Andy. Andy saw the guard-- a solitary girl smaller than him-- and the bars of the prison, thin as fence posts and definitely easy to break, and he ran at the cell. Andy was confident that he could bend or snap the bars, but as soon as he laid his hands on them, he yanked back. His hands were burning with a pain so intense his vision went white and his ears were filled with an agonized rush that drowned out the world.

            Andy blinked, and though he wasn’t touching the bars, his hands were still burning. The girl, a human, Andy realized, looked somewhere between pitying and amused.

            “I wouldn’t recommend touching the bars,” she said.

            “Silver?” Andy asked, weary.

            “Threaded with iron, yes, and with an electrical charge running through it,” she said. “The master has his bases covered.”

            Neither of them moved to attack the other, Andy noted. He was grateful, because he was exhausted, and fighting even a human felt like too much at the moment. The palms of his hands were still throbbing. Pete’s eyes were narrowed as he took in the sight of Andy, bleeding and panting. Meanwhile, the rest of the occupants of the cramped cell hardly glanced up at him.

            “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where the key is?” Andy said.

            “Doubtful,” she agreed. Suddenly Andy recognized her as the human Elijah had drank from earlier. Her left wrist was taped up with a thick, white bandage, plastered down well enough that Andy couldn’t smell the wound at all.

            “I bet I could get it from you,” Andy said. He puffed out his chest slightly, surveying the girl. She was a small human and he was a vampire. It wouldn’t be that much of a fight.

            “If I had it,” she said. “Which I don’t.”

            “And I get the feeling you wouldn’t tell me if you did?” he asked.

            “Ask your fae if you don’t believe me,” she said. Andy glanced back at Pete, who nodded without looking up.

            “Are you going to be even remotely helpful?” Andy asked. The girl shook her head, and Andy all but snarled. The bars were untouchable, he couldn’t justify killing this admittedly belligerent but largely innocent human, nor did he think it would do him any good. He supposed if he could find circuit breakers anywhere he could probably turn off the electricity running through the bars, but if it was made of iron and silver, that only helped the humans. Somehow Andy doubted that Jon and Patrick could bend iron bars. Not to mention the fact that the electric current could easily come from a magical source.

            So, the only solution was to find the key that would get them out, and make their escape. Though, of course, even if they got out of the cell there was no saying whether they would be able to make it outside. They hadn’t done too well fully armed and prepared last time, so what would be different this time?

            Andy had to think. The best thing to do would be to get them into the sunlight, and it was still dark out, but the sun would rise in a few hours. The faster he could do that, the more it would prove to a man like Elijah that they weren’t the type of people to be fucked with.

            “I’ll be back for you guys, okay?” Andy said. Joe raised his eyebrows at Andy, and looking into his eyes Andy could see the fear that Joe had been hiding, for himself or for others, it was impossible to tell.

            “Soon,” Andy promised, his voice fervent.

            Andy had at least the beginnings of a plan: find a key, somehow. Given who was in charge around there, he suspected that he knew exactly where it would be, but the problem then was how to get a very small object off of the strongest vampire Andy had ever met in his life.

            Come to think of it, that wasn’t really a plan at all.

            His chest was throbbing and he missed his daughter and it was up to him to come up with some way to save the day. Getting everyone out of this mess didn’t seem like a very likely outcome at that moment.

            Andy started back up the stairs, unwilling to deal with the elevator again. He ignored the wound on his chest as he scaled level after level. Just before he made it up to where Elijah had met with him earlier, he heard industrial clanging and creaking behind the door.

            Andy kicked the door open, unsure of what he was expecting to find. A blood factory, maybe, humans getting drained like animals at a slaughterhouse. But instead, it appeared to be a commercial laundry room, loads of white fabric tumbling around in circles, visible through the glass doors of the machines. There were a few people in the room folding and sorting laundry, and all of them stopped what they were doing to stare at Andy.

            “What are you doing here?” someone demanded. Andy looked down and saw-

            “Briana!” he said. “You’re okay!”

            “Shut up!” she said. The others in the room- vampires, Andy thought, but his sense of smell wasn’t working to its full effect- stared at the two of them in disbelief. Briana grabbed Andy by his elbow and yanked him right back out into the stairwell.

            “You’re doing laundry for this fucker?” Andy asked.

            “Believe it or not, this wasn’t exactly my plan,” Briana said. She was even dressed like a service worker, in an old fashioned dress uniform, her hair done up in curls. “You shouldn’t have contacted me.”

            “Too late,” Andy said. “What happened?”

            “He found me after you did,” she said, miserable. “Well- not him, of course, but someone who works for him. His right-hand girl, the human one. And then when he asks you to join him it’s not really a question.”

            “What does that mean?” Andy pleaded. “Why’s he such a big bad?”

            “He’s ancient,” Briana said. “I don’t even know how old. Impossibly old and impossibly powerful. By the time he got me half the city was on his side. That’s how he works. He’s so fast. He takes over behind the scenes, and once the war is already won he makes it public. You couldn’t remember, but it was always like this. He dreamed of uniting vampires because he could do it. He’s faster and stronger and colder than anyone I’ve ever seen. He only got defeated last time because- well, people thought he’d gone soft, with kids. They weren’t his, not really, but, you know. He would’ve died for Andrea. I thought he did.”

            “Lots of people would’ve died for Andrea, and nobody did,” Andy said. He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. It felt unbearably cruel that he was so close to her, but she was still so- so dead.

            “Well, the girl told me that Elijah needed me in his services. It was, you know, an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

            “You work for him or what?” Andy asked. Briana gave him a harsh look.

            “Join or die,” she said.

            “That seems rather uninspired for such a fearsome leader,” Andy said.

            “I shouldn’t even be talking to you,” Briana said, pulling away.

            “Right,” Andy said. “Because you’re busy with, you know, laundry.”

            “I didn’t ask for this.”

            “And I didn’t do this to you.”

            “Well that’s just fucking fantastic, we’re both blameless pawns in someone else’s scheme, just like what happened with his daughter,” Briana said. “Just let him meet your fucking kid, dude. If you’re in this game to keep your family safe, it’s easiest to go along with whatever people like him want.”

            Andy suspected that she was right. It would be unbearably easy to just insist he stay with them the whole time, take Carmilla back home and tell her not to ever listen to the man who claimed to be her grandfather. Everyone could get out and go home and Andy could ignore the entire city of Chicago succumbing to an ancient vampire who wanted unlimited feeding grounds, because it just wasn’t his problem.

            And it would also be easy to accept the glasses of wine the label offered, or to drink from the devoted human fans who waited way too long outside of shows and just make them forget. It would be easy to finish college and forget his friends and go be a history teacher in Milwaukee by day, and a vampire stalking people’s nightmares at night.

            Andy wasn’t in the business of ‘easy.’

            “Go back to work,” Andy told Briana, and even he could hear the ring of authority in his voice. She looked taken aback. “But when the time comes, you’ll know, and I think you should run.”

            “You’ve got a plan?” Briana asked.

            “Well, I wouldn’t tell someone working for Elijah if I did,” Andy told her, and without another word, he ran back down the stairs. He did have a plan for once, a risky one but a good one.

            Andy made a racket as he raced down the stairs, so he was shocked when he got to the bottom and saw that most of the occupants of the dungeon were asleep. He supposed it was late at night, but still. The human girl, leaning against the wall, was texting rather than paying attention.

            “Hey,” Andy called. She looked up, uninterested. “Yeah, you, could you leave?”

            “While you talk about your escape plan?” she asked.

            “Yeah, it’d be nice,” Andy said.

            “That’s so not how this works,” she said. “What would I get out of it?”

            “Endless gratitude and the knowledge that you’re doing the right thing,” Andy said.

            “Not worth it,” she said.

            Andy sighed, drew his sword, and held the blade under her chin. She still looked bored.

            “Is your life worth it?” he asked.

            “You don’t seem like the type to kill people to get what you want,” she said. “But I’ve already bled quite a lot today, so how ‘bout this. You give me five hundred dollars and I’ll go use the bathroom.”

            “Seriously?” Andy asked, lowering his sword. “That’s it?”

            The girl shrugged, and Andy pulled a wad of cash out of his wallet. (After discovering a fair chunk of money missing from his accounts from egrigor activity, Andy had grown wary about using credit cards.) She nodded, took the money, and walked out of the room.

            Andy turned towards the cell and almost put his hands on the bars again, but remembered and pulled back at the last second.

            “Wake up Gabe,” Andy demanded. “I need to talk to him.”

            “I’m up,” Gabe said. His hair was mussed, but his eyes were bright and alert like he hadn’t been sleeping at all. “What’s the plan?”

            “How skinny are you as a snake?” Andy asked.

            “He’s ‘bout this big around,” Bill held his hands up in a loose circle, a dazed smile on his face. Andy nodded.

            “So, skinny enough to fit through the bars?”

            Jon’s eyes went wide, and Pete gasped, but Andy was only watching for Gabe’s reaction. He didn’t look pleased, but not entirely averse to the idea. Mostly, he just looked wary.

            “Maybe,” Gabe said. He glanced at the bars doubtfully. “It’ll be close, though, and someone would have to lift me over the crossbar at the bottom. Also, if the electricity in this is enough to knock you on your ass…”

            He didn’t have to finish his sentence. Andy knew. Something that effective against a vampire would probably kill a creature as small as a cobra. They would have to be careful.

            “I wouldn’t ask,” Andy said. “But I know we can do this.”

            Gabe sucked in a deep breath, puffing out his chest.

            “When?”

            “Soon,” Andy said. “At daybreak.”

            “Cause I can see the sun down here,” Gabe said.

            “I’ll come get you guys. I have to take care of some things, and sunrise isn’t for another four hours or so. Get some sleep, if you can,” Andy said. He was resolved, for the first time in a long time. His chest throbbed, an almost gentle reminder of his injury, but he ignored it. This time wasn’t about compromise, or just surviving, but about winning.

***

            Pete had been having trouble sleeping his whole life. From too-vivid nightmares as a kid and surreal horrors that got him referred from one therapist to the next, to hiding sleeping pills under his tongue some nights and taking them by the handful on others, to staring at the ceiling of a bunk and feeling the miles fly by under his back.

            He had never been good at sleeping, but ever since the egrigors had taken Patrick, his insomnia had escalated to a new level. Part of that was out of necessity. Because the thing was, when Patrick woke up, Pete needed to be awake too. At first, Patrick needed bandages changed, and then whenever he woke up screaming, Pete was there, reminding Patrick where he was and who he was and how to breathe. If Pete slept with Patrick (which is to say, fell asleep with him, and nothing more) then he would share Patrick’s nightmares, and see things he didn’t want to see, hear things he didn’t want to hear.

            On top of all of that… Pete had nightmares of his own. Nightmares he didn’t want to inflict on anyone else. It seemed the more he tried to stay up and avoid them, the more his mind clung to them, visible as soon as he closed his eyes. Patrick, bloodless and ravaged, sprawled out on the hotel bed with foggy, blank eyes. Patrick, neck bent at an inhuman angle, fingernails ripped off and mouth still open in a silent scream. Patrick dead, always dead, always Pete’s fault. Sometimes the others were dead too. And it was all his fault.

            So, Pete slept as little as possible. Less than he had in high school, when he first started getting bad nightmares. He averaged something around three hours of sleep a night, though usually it was more like a straight ten hours after staying up for fifty straight. He would stay up, and then he would crash hard.

            But in spite of everything going wrong over the past few days, Patrick had been doing better, and in response, so had Pete. He slept through the night, and though Pete stayed awake out of habit, Patrick didn’t wake up screaming. Coming to Chicago had clearly been good for him, and so, even though they were surrounded by people and now was the worst possible time for either of them to have night terrors, Pete let himself fall asleep in the dank, vampire dungeon.

            It seemed like even in dreams, Pete was bracing himself for the worst. But suddenly he was surrounded by brightness and warm sunlight. Millennium Park, he realized, but unlike what he was used to in reality, it was completely empty. Or, no, not completely empty. Strong emotions were what pulled people into dreams, Pete thought to himself, trying to organize his thoughts as he looked around.

            “I feel better here. With you,” Pete said, but it wasn’t his words that escaped his mouth. This was someone else’s dream.

            “That’s what I’m here for.” The voice was familiar, rich and deep, and though Pete recognized it at once, he didn’t quite believe it until his eyes focused through all the dazzling sunlight. He was looking up into the warm, brown eyes of Chicago.

            For the first time, Pete felt an intense disconnect in the dreams. Usually they shared nightmares, but sometimes it was sex dreams. Every time, the emotions present were so strong that Pete was caught up in the other person’s feelings. But while he could feel love welling up inside him, strong and warm and so full of ease, he also felt something very outside of Patrick. Something very much his own.

            “You should wake up soon,” Chicago said. Pete felt the warmth and pressure of another hand in his, and a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “It’s close to sunrise.”

            “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay, though,” Pete said, again with the words that weren’t his. “We’ll probably be going back to LA as soon as everybody gets out all right.”

            “Maybe that’s for the best,” Chicago said. “Because I love you, but…”

            “But?”

            “I wanna help, Patrick, but I can only alleviate the pain. This isn’t living. It’s just a dream.”

            “I know that,” Pete said, a little too fast. “It’s just nice to have- to have someone. Someone to talk to. Every time I hear them say something and I can’t see them, I think it’s the other ones again.”

            “You have lots of people,” Chicago said. “Patrick, you’re not alone.”

            “But I am,” Pete said, and an emotion that was all his own ached deep in his chest. “In this, anyway.”

            “You’re never alone,” Chicago said. “I wouldn’t let you leave if you were. But you should go back home, when you’re ready. I can’t protect you from your dreams forever. And I know it’s hard, but they really do love you. They’ll be there for you too, back home.”

            Pete-- or the body he inhabited, anyway- paused, then stepped closer to Chicago. Too close.

            “This is always going to be home,” he said. “LA is great, but this- you’re my home.”

            His face was too close to Chicago’s, close enough to feel Chicago’s breath on his lips, and they were only drawing closer.

            “Say goodbye before you leave,” Chicago said, pulling away just before their lips met. The dream dissolved, pleasant and gentle, but Pete felt like he had been slammed back into his body, suddenly wide awake.

            “Pete?”

            Pete turned to face Patrick, who looked groggy. “Have you slept?”

            “Yeah,” Pete said. “Yeah, I did. Hey, quick question, baby, what the fuck?!”

            Pete’s voice echoed against the walls of the dungeon, and Patrick drew back, not in a flinch, just in surprise.

            “What do you mean?” Patrick asked, his voice hushed in direct response to Pete’s half-shout, but Pete was past that.

            “I see your fucking dreams have gotten better,” Pete said. Patrick’s face reddened quickly, and some sick part of Pete felt better. After months of walking on eggshells, Pete wanted to yell, or at least talk like himself, with some semblance of a personality.

            “I mentioned less nightmares, yeah,” Patrick said.

            “Replaced with dreams about your ex-boyfriend?!”

            “Now?” Patrick asked, his voice still low as he glanced around the cell. Pete paid no attention to the others, but Patrick was predictably embarrassed. “You wanna do this now?”

            “When else?” Pete asked, laughing without humor. “When do we ever fucking talk to each other?”

            Pete caught sight of Joe’s face out of the corner of his eye, looking like he really wanted to be somewhere else, but he was past caring.

            “Pete.” There was anger in Patrick’s voice too, but it was better contained than Pete’s. “They’re just dreams. Where I talk to my friend.”

            “Do you usually kiss your friends like that?”

            “We didn’t kiss!” Patrick yelled. “Fucking hell, it’s not- it isn’t like that! I’m not like that!”

            “Then why didn’t you tell me?” Pete demanded. And Patrick didn’t answer. He wasn’t lying, Pete could tell that, and deep down he knew that Patrick wasn’t like that, as he had said. He would probably die before he cheated on someone. And yet, Pete had managed to get to the heart of some problem. Patrick wouldn’t meet his eyes, and he deliberately hadn’t told Pete.

            The intensity of the moment was broken when their prison guard butted in.

            “Did I miss something?” she asked. “What’s up with you two?”

            “Nothing,” Patrick lied, looking down at the ground. Still avoiding Pete. No, he hadn’t cheated on Pete, but he had wanted to.

            Pete felt drained. Body and soul, he felt empty.

            “That’s okay, who needs sleep, right?” Gabe said. “I for one am really enjoying the decor down here. I didn’t know Pottery Barn had such an extensive medieval collection.”

            “Hey, has anybody ever told you guys that you’re exhausting?” the guard asked. From her aura, Pete guessed that she wasn’t thrilled to be there, but she was hard to read. He wondered idly if there might be a way to help her when they made their escape.

            “Frequently,” Gabe said. He turned back to Bill, and Pete turned away from the others entirely. Chicago. Pete was starting to think he should just never sleep again.

            “Should we ask?” Jon said, under his breath, but they could all hear each other.

            “Lover’s quarrel,” Bill said dreamily. Pete was a little concerned about Bill. At first, when they’d been thrown in a cell with him, they were just relieved to see him alive and uninjured that nothing else had mattered, but the longer they were there, the more off he seemed. His aura looked mostly fine, just a little sleepy, but he was acting like he was high.

            That said, Pete still growled under his breath at Bill’s comment. Patrick huffed.

            Though Pete had slept through a great deal of the night, his time awake dragged on. He wasn’t sure if the others drifted back to sleep, but Pete forced himself to stay upright. The human girl guarding them seemed fully invested in texting, but Pete stayed on his guard.

            “What are you doing here?” he asked eventually.

            The guard took her time looking up, and eventually sighed, turning her face up to Pete.

            “Here as in, like clinging to the skin of a rock hurtling through space? Or in the dungeon?”

            “The dungeon,” Pete said. “I mean- listen, if you need to get out, we can help you.”

            “Well that’s presumptuous of you,” she said. “What, you think I need some man to help me out of the big scary vampire situation?”

            “This isn’t a gender thing!” Pete said. “I just figured you might not want to live your life as a walking juicebox.”

            “I’m not a slave or anything,” she said. “I work here.”

            “Work here?” Pete said. “He pays you?”

            “Well, sort of,” she amended. “He’s paying my way through college.”

            “You can’t just get a scholarship like a normal person?” Pete asked. She glared at him.

            “We can’t all be Pete Wentz,” she said, her voice going venomous at his name. “There’s a lot of people in the world that want to get into the music business. If this is how I get my shot, well, it beats waitressing.”

            Even though he was still horrified, Pete laughed a little.

            “I don’t know your name,” he said.

            “Bebe,” she said. “Bebe Rexha. Remember that name, it’s gonna be big one day.”

            “I believe you,” Pete said. She gave him an unwilling smile, and then went back to her phone.

            Pete’s eyelids were just starting to feel heavy again when he heard the sound of heavy footsteps running down the stairs. Pete sat upright again immediately, and he shook Gabe’s shoulder to alert him.

            Andy wasn’t the one running down the stairs, though. An unfamiliar vampire did, his eyebrows drawn in exaggerated concern. Bebe looked up immediately, her posture tense and ready to jump to action.

            “You’re needed upstairs,” the new vampire said. “The master needs to feed.”

            “He already has tonight!” she said, sounding affronted.

            “I was told it was quite urgent,” the man said. She glowered at him, but strode over to the staircase without a word to Pete or anyone else in the cell.

            The moment Pete could no longer hear either of their footsteps in the distance, Andy appeared at the foot of the stairs, agile and dead silent.

            “Morning,” he said. “I hope no one minds, but I’m bringing the fight down to you.”

            “Are you okay?” Pete asked. Andy was still bleeding, and looked about as desperately tired as Pete felt.

            “There’ll be plenty of time to be okay later,” Andy said. “Gabe?”

            “Someone’ll lift me over the bar, right?” Gabe asked. Pete could feel the fear in his aura, but he was doing a great job at remaining calm.

            “I’ve got you,” Pete said.

            Gabe nodded, cracked his neck and his knuckles, then closed his eyes and began to shrink down into himself, getting shorter and smaller until he had fully morphed into the neon purple cobra.

            “That’s still so freaky,” Joe said. Gabe turned his head and hissed at him, forked tongue flicking out in annoyance.

            “Right, slither on up, buddy,” Pete said, bending down and holding his hands out. Gabe coiled himself up in Pete’s palms, and Pete carried him as close to the bars as he dared. The aura exuded from the snake was a little smaller than Gabe’s normal aura, but it was the same color, the same shades that were uniquely Gabe. Nervous, but righteously loyal above all else. The determination coming off him was encouraging to Pete.

            Gabe slowly stuck his head out, passing his hood through the bars of the cell with ease. No issue with fitting, at least. He stuck his body out further, until his head reached the ground on the other side. Pete let out a long, shaky breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

            Gabe slithered slowly out of Pete’s hands and onto the floor on the other side, lowering his body inch by careful inch. He was most of the way out of the cell when the remaining few inches of his tail slipped out of Pete’s hands.

            Reacting on instinct, Pete moved his hand down instantly to catch him, ramming the back of his wrist into the electrified metal in the process. The sudden pain of the shock was enough to knock Pete backwards, his vision whiting out. When he could see again, Gabe was coiled up on the other side, hissing at Pete. At some point, the “hiss” morphed into the word “shit!” and Gabe was in his human form again, crouched down on the other side of the bars.

            “Pete! Fuck, are you okay?”

            “Fine,” Pete said, a little dazed. He looked at his wrist, a burn mark across it from either the iron or the electricity. “You?”

            “I’m fine,” Gabe said, sounding exasperated. “Never mind. Andy, what’s the plan?”

            “Right. Gabe, you’re going to need to try and kill me,” Andy said, handing Gabe a knife. Gabe looked stunned.

            “I’m what?” he asked.

            “Well, I mean, don’t actually kill me,” Andy said. “But don’t hold back if you can. Make it convincing. You’re going to have to threaten my life in exchange for Elijah unlocking the cell and opening the door. I think he’s on his way now.”

            “You do?”

            “If he’s as smart as I think he is, then I’m sure of it,” Andy said. “I injured him and laid a trap to get the girl upstairs, but he’ll figure out where I’ve gone soon. Threaten to kill me and try to act like you mean it.”

            “That’ll never work,” Patrick said.

            “I think it might,” Andy insisted.

            “Why?” Gabe asked. Andy glanced at the stairs, but explained in a hurried voice anyway.

            “Because he needs me,” Andy said. “And that’s the only leverage we’ve got right now. You all ready to fight when you get out? Because this is only gonna get harder.”

            No one confirmed verbally, but Pete heard the metallic sound of blades being drawn from sheaths.

            “The exit is up two flights of stairs and just down the hall,” Andy said. “So just… just run for the sunlight, okay?”

            Pete nodded stiffly, one hand wrapped loosely around the handle of his whip, still coiled through his belt loop.

            The waiting dragged out into a few minutes of terse silence before they heard footsteps on the stairs again. Pete gripped his whip tighter, acutely aware of how sweaty his hands were and how useless he was in a physical fight, as Elijah stepped back out into the light.

            Gabe was just barely faster than him, pointing the tip of his knife just under Andy’s chin.

            “Let them out,” he said. Elijah stopped walking towards them, his eyes on the small silver dagger in Gabe’s hand. “Unlock the door and let them out or I kill him.”

            “You’ll have to forgive me for saying so, but that seems unlikely,” Elijah said. “You don’t strike me as a killer.”

            Gabe made a face and pushed the knife harder against Andy’s neck. A lone drop of blood welled up at the point, and Elijah almost started forward, but then he stopped.

            “Furthermore,” he said. “Why would you kill your friend when killing him moves you even further from freedom? If he dies, what incentive do I have to keep the rest of you alive?”

            “We need a new plan,” Joe’s voice was barely a whisper in Pete’s ear, almost inaudible. “Something fast.”

            “Let this be a lesson to you,” Elijah said. “I’ve never tasted the blood of an encantado before. Now seems like an ideal time to try.”

            “You put silver bullets in your gun, right?” Patrick asked.

            “That doesn’t kill vampires!”

            “We don’t have to kill him!”

            “I’ll do it,” Gabe said.

            “Or I can always feed you to the fledglings,” Elijah continued.

            There was a deafening bang next to Pete’s ear, a puff of smoke, and as Pete blinked away the grit he saw Elijah knocked backwards, slumped over. There was a heavy iron key visible where it hung from the inside of his jacket. Beside Pete, Patrick handed Joe’s pistol back to him.

            Gabe and Andy were moving too slowly, though. Hoping that a lifetime of watching Indiana Jones movies would make up for never actually training with his whip, Pete cracked the bullwhip through the bars of the cell, in the hopes of getting it around the key. He missed the key by a long shot, but did manage to momentarily knock the unstable vampire off his feet, and Andy snatched up the key and had the door unlocked before Elijah could get back up.

            Andy’s sire unfortunately hadn’t come up the stairs alone. He had brought with him Bebe, Dimitri, and to Pete’s immense displeasure, Damen from the bar. But the four of them were decidedly outnumbered with the door of the cage open. Elijah must have given some sort of command for them to be recaptured that Pete had missed, but he didn’t care. This, Pete thought, this was going to be fun.

            Pete didn’t get a chance to do all that much in the flurry of fighting going on all around him. He went out of his way to elbow Damen in the face, nicking his arm on a fang as he did, and managed to bang his own head into a wall, but the physical exertion felt nice, and he could tell that his friends were winning.

            Andy managed to kick the weakened Elijah into the empty cell and slam the door shut. He was smiling down at him when Elijah held up a cell phone and rolled his eyes.

            “Very well done,” he said, “Now tell me, how is it that you intend to get out?”

            Andy and Joe looked upwards, for some reason. After a moment of confusion Pete could also hear the sound of footsteps. It was a whole lot more than four vampires, he was sure of that.

            “It’s daylight,” Andy said, “Come on!”

            They took to the stairs, back to the old standby of running away as quickly as possible. Bill was stumbling, but no one let him fall behind, and they all poured out of the stairway just as a crowd came down from further upstairs. The vampires fanned out across the lobby, and as the vampires spread out, Pete realized they were trapped. There was the staircase behind them and the big glass doors just beyond the line of vampires, all of them devoid of emotion. The sun was rising, yes, but the light just barely didn’t reach reach where they stood inside the lobby.

            Inexplicably, Bill started giggling. Pete turned to stare at him, trying not to look dismayed by the reaction. They were about to get thrown back into their killer cell, and God only knew what other terrible things were going to happen. Patrick was probably going to be offered up as a feeder, Pete would be left to rot, and Bill was clearly worse off in the head than they all thought.

            “Red Rover, Red Rover,” Bill said. “Send Gabey right over.”

            “Sorry?” Gabe said.

            “Vampire Red Rover,” Bill insisted, pointing at the line. Pete stared. Bill had a point. The sunlight’s reach inside the building was just behind them, gold on the ground not even a foot beyond their backs.

            “We’re made it this far,” Joe said, and he ran across the distance between them and the line of vampires, forcing his way past two of them and into a patch of sunlight.

            The vampires snarled, all of them apparently realizing at once what was going on, but Pete was already running. Somewhere near his feet, he saw a flash of purple as a snake slithered past.

            Athletic when not being compared to creatures with super strength, Pete was a fast runner, and he was fairly certain he could duck and weave his way through the vampires, if they were confused enough. But he didn’t get far before he felt resistance tugging at him from behind. He turned to see Bebe, one hand gripping the back of his shirt, her face resolute.

            “Oh come on,” Pete pleaded.

            “I can’t just let you get away,” she said.

            Pete stopped trying to pull away. He leaned into her like he was acquiescing, and then when her grip loosened, he pulled away, ducked under the arms of a vampire reaching out to grab him, and slid into the warm sunlight.

            Pete let out a laugh of delight before remembering that Bebe wasn’t actually a vampire, and he wasn’t safe from her yet. The thought was driven home as she stalked past the vampires and right up to Pete.

            “This feels like cheating,” Pete said, and before he was done speaking she had lashed out with something small and sharp in her hand, just grazing the side of his arm with a cut that stung.

            Pete had every intention of helping the others into the safety of the sunlight, but for now he was preoccupied and outmatched. Although this girl was human, she was a strong fighter. She wasn’t trying to kill Pete, he didn’t think, but she was definitely trying to injure him, and it was all he could do to defend himself and dodge her strikes.

            As Pete very nearly missed being run through the shoulder, he saw that her weapon of choice was a polished wooden stake. He missed a beat staring at it, and barely pulled out of the way of another dangerous swipe.

            “You’re fighting with a stake?” he asked. “You work for the vampires!”

            “And they teach me how to defend myself from the ones who can’t behave,” Bebe said. “When your blood smells like mine, it’s good to know one’s enemy and all that.”

            “For fuck’s sake, just come with us!” Pete said. He could hear Joe’s gun going off intermittently, presumably trying to help their party over from the safety of the sunlight. “You’re on the wrong side!”

            “I’m on my own side, dude,” Bebe said. “I’m getting paid, I’ve got protection, and I’m learning how to take care of myself for a future that’s hopefully free from all this. I haven’t been involved in any genocides, or even anything that makes me uncomfortable. So I- am- good!”

            Each word was punctuated with a swinging motion with the stake, and on the last, Pete drove his knee into her stomach, knocking her off balance. He jumped away and stood up next to Joe and Andy.

            “Joe?” Pete said. Joe obligingly turned his gun on her, and Bebe froze, looking more put-out than angry.

            “Now that’s cheating,” she said. Pete let out the breath he hadn’t known he had been holding, and looked around him. He saw Patrick standing behind him, looking a little weary but otherwise fine, giving Pete relief so intense it seemed to burn in his mind. He’s fine.

            They stood on the side of sunlight, the vampires snarling at them in anger, unable to step forward. With the warmth of the sun on Pete’s back, he felt overwhelmed with a sense of victory.

            Then, from somewhere back in the shadows of the lobby, Bill screamed.

            Before Pete could really understand what was happening, Patrick was running back into the shadows. Pete didn’t have the presence of mind to shout or run after him. One moment Patrick was there, and then he was swallowed up by the throng of vampires, and as soon as he was out of sight Pete’s breath caught, like there was no air left in the world. He couldn’t see Patrick, couldn’t hear him. Not again, not again.

            And then, just as quickly as he had vanished, Patrick appeared again, Bill’s arm slung over his shoulder. Patrick all but threw Bill’s mostly prone body onto the sunlit floor, where he was caught by Andy before he hit the ground. Just before Patrick could cross the dividing line between light and dark, however, one of the vampires threw himself in front of him, lightning fast.

            “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Patrick said after a second of stunned silence.

            “I cannot wait to drain you of every drop of blood in your body,” the vampire growled. Damen yet again.

            Andy was clearly ready to spring, Pete could tell from his position frozen in place, but then he saw a flash of silver in Patrick’s hand. Pete didn’t understand, then saw a tiny spot of blood bloom on the inside of Patrick’s elbow.

            Damen hurled himself sloppily at Patrick, lost in his bloodlust. Patrick shoved forward at the same time, and pinned Damen to the floor, the sunlight shining on both of them.

            Damen’s screeches were horrible for a second, and then they were gone. Pete only got one look at the vampire’s face, a mask of monstrous fury with pupils blown out to their full extent, and then he was dissolving.

            “Burn all the way to hell,” Patrick said as Damen turned to dust. He stood up and turned to the vampires that were still watching, and shouted “Anyone else feeling thirsty?”

            “Oh, shit,” Joe said. “Hey, is there anyone in there called Rose? You have a friend looking for you! No?”

            The group of attackers were walking away, but one of the girls called back to Joe:

            “Did he give you a message to pass along?”

            “Just that some guy named Christian was looking all over the city for her. He seemed pretty upset.”

            The girl nodded curtly, and hurried to catch up with the others making their exodus.

            The vampires had walked away, leaving the lobby empty. All of them but one, a teenage girl who hung back, looking hesitant. Hesitant and familiar.

            “Briana,” Andy said softly. “You can still come with us.”

            “How do you suggest that?” she asked, eyeing the pile of dust on the ground. Andy grabbed something small and black and tossed it to her. She opened up the umbrella, and looked up at it doubtfully.

            “It’s not a long term solution, but it can get you out of here,” Andy said. Briana laughed, and very carefully stepped out into the light with them, covered by the umbrella.

            When they got back to the hotel room, they made sure all the curtains were closed, but Briana still sat as far from the window as she could.

            Safe at the hotel, they finally had a chance to talk. Andy explained what had happened to him while they were locked up in the basement, from his encounter with the egrigor to how he snuck back into Elijah’s room and injured him badly enough that he would need to call for more blood just at sunrise.

            “I actually got the idea from the egrigor,” Andy said. “Blood loss makes you thirsty, he said.”

            It was a simple plan, but clever. Andy couldn’t hold his own in a one on one fight against Elijah, so weakening him evened the odds.

            There was very little to tell him about their time in the cell in response, other than the dreams that Pete didn’t want to linger on, and the impromptu karaoke session Andy had walked in on. They had started that largely out of boredom, and also to try and invigorate Bill, who had been acting oddly.

            At that, Briana jumped in to offer an explanation.

            “Vampires can drink from part-fae,” she said. “I don’t know why you would, but I’ve heard some compare it to, like, capsaicin in hot sauce. It hurts, but it’s diluted enough that it won’t kill a vampire. Problem is that vampire venom is painful to fae too. He looks like someone drank too much from him, maybe one of the other guards. A little delirious from blood loss and mild poisoning, but he should be able to sleep it off. Of course, there are fairy solutions that would heal him faster, but I can’t help you there.”

            She glanced at Pete like she was asking him what they were, but Pete certainly didn’t know any fae-specific cures. He hadn’t even known that such a thing existed. But he tried to be as helpful as he could as they laid Bill down, made him drink some juice, and called Adam to come to the hotel.

            While Bill was being fussed over, Briana turned her attention over to Andy, where she frowned. Pete saw as well that Andy’s chest was still bleeding, even though it had been hours since he had been cut.

            “What is this?” Briana asked.

            “Knife wound,” Andy said. “I don’t know why it’s still bleeding, it’s not that deep.”

            “Does it burn?” Briana asked. He nodded, and she pressed her finger against the cut, then hissed and yanked her hand back.

            “What were you cut with?” she asked. “It burns like holy water!”

            Andy looked down at the wound, then closed his eyes. Pete felt sick. A holy water soaked knife sounded like exactly the kind of thing the egrigors would do, and Andy went straight to the bathroom to wash it off. He then pulled Patrick aside, looking uncomfortable but desperate, and asked if he could drink from him.

            Patrick’s hand shook slightly as he offered it to Andy, and he winced in pain when Andy bit down. Pete felt so badly for him that he almost forgot to be angry at Patrick and grabbed his hand. Then he remembered the tender face of Chicago, eyes dark as he looked at Patrick, and his resolve stiffened.

            “I’m gonna head out for a bit,” Pete announced. Remembering Chicago had taken his mind down darker paths, and he couldn’t stand the aura of victory in the tiny hotel room. An aura notably not shared by Patrick or Andy, for whatever reason, but lingering in the room nonetheless. The mood grated against him.

            “Where are you going?” Joe asked. Protective. Every single thing seemed to annoy Pete in that moment.

            “Down to the hotel bar,” Pete said. “I just want to get day drunk; I promise I won’t go far.” Patrick caught Pete’s eye, and Pete glared back at him, daring him to follow. Patrick looked away, equally cold.

            Pete left the room without anyone else protesting, relishing in the vague sense of astonishment and discomfort he left behind. Some angry part of him wanted to leave everyone else’s auras as unhappy as his.

            Downstairs, his first drink arrived at the exact same time as Gabe showed up. Gabe at least did Pete the courtesy of not looking at him immediately. Instead, he ordered a drink of his own and sat down in silence.

            “Can you spare me the lecture?” Pete asked.

            “No,” Gabe said, his voice dangerously close to cheerful. “That’s not the kind of friend I am.”

            “So tell me I’m being a dick for no good reason,” Pete said.

            “I was actually going to ask what happened,” Gabe said. “You and Patrick woke up shouting at each other, and even before that… Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

            “What’s wrong?” Pete said. He’d barely begun to drink, but he felt edgy enough to vent already. “You want to know what’s wrong? Everything is wrong! There’s no good place to start! I knocked up my ex who isn’t ready to be a mom or get an abortion, so in five months, there’s gonna be some kid that I’m responsible for. For obvious reasons, I haven’t had much of a chance to discuss that with my current boyfriend, who can’t talk to me at all about anything because he got tortured by my lookalike specifically to make my life more difficult. I have pissed off the entirety of both seelie and unseelie court, which isn’t currently an issue, but I really feel like that’s going to bite me in the ass soon. I haven’t slept in three fucking months, and when I do I just have nightmares. The same lookalike bastards have plans to hurt my guitarist, also for the purpose of fucking with me, and I have no idea why. I’ve got fuckall written for the new album. Oh, and my boyfriend is leaving me for an area code!”

            “Leaving you for an area code?” Gabe asked after a minute.

            Pete slammed his head down onto the bar.

            “We were fighting because he was dreaming about Chicago,” Pete said miserably. “I mentioned the bullshit dream sharing, right? Right, well, I’m used to seeing Patrick’s dreams- which have been nothing but nightmares lately. Predictable, right? And then he stopped having nightmares, two whole nights in a row, and when I finally fall asleep at the same time as him, it was because- because he was there with Chicago.”

            “He can’t help what he dreams about,” Gabe began, but Pete shook his head.

            “He wasn’t dreaming about Chicago,” Pete said. “Chicago was in his dream. Apparently, even though he doesn’t have a physical form anymore, he still can get into people’s dreams at night, when they’re in the city. Real fucking convenient we came here, huh?”

            “Was he-? I mean, did he do anything?” Gabe asked. The question somehow made Pete even more miserable, and he took a long drink before answering.

            “No,” he said finally. “They almost kissed, but nothing actually happened. Not while I was there, and- I mean, it’s Patrick. I don’t think he would.”

            “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about!” Gabe said. “Look, you’re still friends with some of your exes, and you physically can’t lie, so don’t go telling me that it never gets weird with Mikey or Ashlee. I get being pissed, but if he didn’t do anything…”

            “He didn’t,” Pete said. Albeit, he said it grudgingly, but it was true. “Or, I don’t think they had dream sex or something, anyway. They were holding hands.”

            “Not to disregard your pain or anything, but I think holding hands only counts as cheating when you’re in eighth grade,” Gabe said with a joking smile. Pete laughed a tiny bit, not that he thought it was that funny, but desperate to laugh.

            “Mostly they were talking,” he said. “About the- the egrigors.”

            “Oh,” Gabe said. “Well, shit, that makes a lot of sense. Damn, Pete, that’s not bad at all. It makes sense that he’d want to talk to someone else about those things. That’s not even an issue of cheating, man. Explains a lot, too. I mean, I don’t know the details of what went down, but even I could see a huge difference in him after just the one night-”

            “I KNOW!” Pete screamed. The background noise of clinking and murmuring all came to a halt as the bartender and the few patrons present at ten in the morning stopped what they were doing to stare at him. Pete’s hands were shaking too hard to grab the glass and take a drink, so he closed his eyes and tried to take a steadying breath.

            “Pete?”

            “I know,” Pete said again, his voice low and strained. “I know he’s doing better.”

            Gabe had gotten to the real root of the problem. It felt petulant to admit it, but Pete knew, deep down, that he wasn’t really concerned about hand holding. Not that on its own.

            “I’m- he’s Patrick,” Pete said helplessly. “We’re best friends. He’s my boyfriend. And I’ve been doing every fucking thing I can think of to help and then Chicago walks into our lives and he does more for Patrick in one night than I’ve been able to do in three fucking months!”

            Somewhere in there he lost control of his volume, and he vaguely noticed that the whole bar was staring at him again. His eyes stung like he was going to cry. This was such a stupid thing to get his feelings hurt over.

            “Look, I get it,” he said before Gabe could say anything. “I know I should just be grateful he’s doing better, and I am, but. But maybe he should leave me for his area code boyfriend. Clearly I’m not doing him any fucking good at all.”

            “Pete,” Gabe said, and Pete shook his head.

            “The only reason he got tortured in the first place is because we’re together,” Pete said. He made no effort to keep the misery and self-pity out of his voice. “And apparently just a few hours of hanging out with someone more stable can help him feel that much better. And- and fuck, I’m gonna be a dad soon. He didn’t sign up for this.”

            “Are you keeping the kid, then?” Gabe asked. Pete shook his head.

            “I don’t know, I don’t know!” he said. “I’m not ready, but I can’t not, you know what I mean?”

            “Mmhmm,” Gabe said. “You know, I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself.”

            “Of course you don’t, you’re supposed to say that,” Pete said. He calmed down enough to finish the rest of his drink, and the bartender wordlessly handed him another.

            “I’m not saying it because I’m supposed to, jackass,” Gabe said. “Look, I don’t know all the details about… whatever it was that went down. Patrick getting tortured by the thingies.”

            “Egrigors,” Pete said dully.

            “Right, so he got tortured and he’s been doing bad, and he can’t talk to you three because you look like them. Which means that the first night with Chicago was probably the first night in three months that Patrick got to talk about what happened with anyone.

            “Frankly, I think I get it better than you would. You’ve always been fae, Pete, you were born like that. Andy was born a vampire and Joe got turned really young, so you’ve always had your families in on this secret, always had a magical support system. But if you drew a Venn diagram of people Patrick can talk to about magic and people he would talk about his feelings with, the overlap is not very fucking big.”

            “I get that,” Pete said. He hadn’t thought of it that clearly thus far, but he did know. “I know why, but did it have to be Chicago? He’s got, I don’t know, lots of friends in the magic community.”

            “I get the sense that he probably wants this to stay kind of private,” Gabe said. “Look, I’m not saying it doesn’t suck, but you’ve got to let him have this.”

            Pete felt chastised, but no worse than he had coming down here.

            “It feels like the monkey’s paw or something,” he said. “I get famous, then I get nudes leaked. I get to play music for a living, but everyone calls it selling out. I get Patrick, but-” his words caught in his throat. “Maybe I should go back to LA and he should just stay here, with Chicago.”

            “Don’t be an idiot, Pete,” Gabe said. “You can wallow, you can feel sorry for yourself, but breaking up isn’t going to do anyone any good.”

            “How do you know?” Pete snapped.

            Gabe shrugged. “It’s you and Patrick, man. It just… makes sense.”

            Gabe drank with Pete for a bit. Pete never wanted to be the sort of person that got day drunk, especially not before noon, but he thought he’d earned the break after the week he’d had. At some point, Andy came down to check on them, and Pete tried to surreptitiously cover up the amount of glasses on the counter. It was too early in the morning to deal with Andy’s disapproval.

            To his relief, though, Andy just sat on his other side. Pete waited for a reprimand for a minute, and then finally said:

            “You here for the drinks?”

            “Just came to see if you were okay,” Andy said. Even though Gabe was there, and the conversation felt private, Pete felt just loose and warm enough to let his curiosity get the better of him.

            “Andy?” he said. Andy raised an eyebrow at him. “When did you know you were ready for kids?”

            To Pete’s surprise, Andy snorted.

            “I didn’t, if you remember,” he said. “My girlfriend of two months sprung the news on me, and the options were get on board or get a job that pays child support.”

            “But you made a decision,” Pete insisted. “You kept her. You’re a dad.” Andy’s face sobered up a little, and he nodded.

            “I never really thought about it like a choice,” he said. “She’s my daughter, you know?” He paused and swallowed. “And, then. To answer your other question, I don’t know if anyone’s ever ready. Carm’s gonna turn four in a few months and I still don’t feel ready. Kinda like everything else in life, kids don’t care if you’re ready or not. You just have to figure it out as you go.”

            “The last thing I need right now is a kid,” Pete said. Andy laughed again.

            “Tell me about it!” Andy said. Pete swallowed, and tried to work up to one last question.

            “Is it worth it?”

            Andy shook his head.

            “I don’t know if you can quantify it like that. I wouldn’t have said so before I had her. But she’s my daughter. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time and there’s always something I’ve forgotten that I need to take care of. But I love her, and love isn’t always rational.

            “Also, you wouldn’t be doing it alone,” Andy added.

            “Somehow I can’t see me and Ashlee getting married,” Pete said. Andy rolled his eyes.

            “You’re dating Patrick,” he said. “The guy was born with the sole purpose of becoming a dad.”

            “What makes you think he’ll be down for raising someone else’s kid?” Pete asked. “Especially since- especially these days.”

            “Well, one, because I’ve met him,” Andy said. “If you’re concerned, why don’t you talk to him?”

            And that was really the only piece of advice left for Pete to take.

            Pete texted Patrick and asked if they could talk outside. Pete hoped to go on a walk, faor from the prying ears of any well-meaning band members with super-hearing. Rather than getting a reply, Patrick tapped him on the shoulder and Pete spun around, looking up at him eagerly.

            “You sure you’re up for a walk?” Patrick asked, almost smiling at Pete. Pete gulped down some water.

            “Positive,” he said. They stepped outside and set out towards the lake, not speaking at first. They didn’t hold hands either, the way Pete wanted to. Part of the reason was that they were in public, but the larger part of it was that every part of Patrick felt so fragile, all the time. He jumped at the slightest touch, and Pete felt guilty every time he asked for permission to be close to him. So they walked in silence, a good foot of space between them.

            “I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time. Pete looked over at Patrick and laughed a little.

            “You’re sorry?”

            “I thought you were mad at me about Chicago,” Patrick said.

            “Well, yeah, but I was apologizing for being a dick about that,” Pete said. Patrick laughed a little too.

            “You were a dick,” he said. “But I should’ve told you. It really isn’t like that, but I should’ve told you anyway. He’s my ex. It’s weird. I get it.”

            “Yeah, you should’ve. But I could’ve been nicer about it,” Pete said. He swallowed through all the thickness in his throat that was making it so hard to talk. “One day we’re going to have to talk about the egrigors.”

            “Yeah,” Patrick said. “I know.”

            They walked in silence for a few more minutes. It was busy on Lake Shore Drive, full of little kids shrieking as they got close to the water, college-aged dudes throwing frisbees back and forth, and people walking their dogs; the area sunny and full of life.

            “If this is helping, we can stay here,” Pete said. The words burned in his mouth, but he managed to tell Patrick the truth. Anything that helped him mattered more than Pete’s jealousy. “If being with him helps you.”

            “Not if it’s going to make you upset,” Patrick said. “And besides, I don’t think it’s good for me to get too used to this. I’ll start using the dreams as a crutch if we stay. Chicago’s great, but it’s not real, is it? It’s just a dream. I’ve got to face reality.”

            “Like the mirror of Erised,” Pete said. Patrick laughed, a deep, happy laugh that made Pete feel like he was glowing.

            “I am gonna stay long enough to say goodbye,” Patrick said. “But I think that’s all.”

            After another moment of companionable silence, Pete continued. “We’re going to work things out, right?”

            “That’s a stupid question,” Patrick said. “Of course we are. I’m in love with you, and the two of us can work through anything.”

            Pete held his breath.

            “Including a kid?”

            Patrick’s head snapped around to look at Pete. They had sort of talked about the baby. Pete had explained the situation and said he hadn’t decided anything, and Patrick had never brought it up again. Pete had assumed Patrick didn’t want a kid, not when they were this young, when they hadn’t even been together for a year. But if Andy was right…

            “Are you- are you gonna have the kid, then?” Patrick asked. His face was entirely inscrutable.

            “I am,” Pete said. “I don’t know if I’m gonna be any good at being a dad, but I’m gonna try. If you don’t want to raise this kid you don’t have-”

            Pete was cut off with Patrick’s lips slamming into his. Pete kissed him back in a moment of bliss - God, but he missed touching Patrick - before coming to his senses and pushing him off with a “Public, we’re in public, oh my god, babe.”

            “We’re having a kid?!” Patrick asked, now entirely lit up with delight. “I mean, you are, I won’t overstep if you don’t- but there’s gonna be a baby?! Really?! You’re keeping it?!”

            “I did not expect you to be this excited,” Pete laughed.

            “It’s a baby!” Patrick exclaimed. “Fuck, it’s your baby! Shit, I’ve gotta start swearing less! We’ve got to get a room set up and tell my mom!”

            Pete couldn’t respond, he was too busy laughing, laughter that was surprisingly happy and relieved. He felt lighter and happier than he had in months.

            “You want to raise this kid with me?”

            “More than anything,” Patrick said. His eyes were shining, but for once he didn’t look embarrassed that he was going to start crying. “I didn’t want to- it’s your kid, man, I didn’t want to sway you, but-”

            “You could’ve saved me a lot of heartache,” Pete said. He wasn’t really upset, though. “I thought you’d be upset, since it’s Ashlee’s.”

            “Right, because I have such a deep, dark feud with the Simpson sisters,” Patrick rolled his eyes. “It’s a baby. It’s with you. I can’t wait.”

            “We’re gonna fuck the kid up, you know,” Pete said, his voice thick. He noticed that he had started crying too.

            “All kids get fucked up,” Patrick said. “And we’re gonna be awesome parents.” He paused, looked down, and then met Pete’s eyes again with burning intensity. “You’re going to be a fantastic dad.”

            And then Pete was really crying, more than he could cover up or brush off, and he had just enough presence of mind to glamour the two of them as Patrick kissed him again and again and again, gripping his hair and holding his waist with hands that didn’t feel fragile at all.

            They stayed the night at Patrick’s mom’s house. Joe and Andy flew back to LA ahead of them, and the others all went their separate ways. Pete and Patrick finally had a chance to slow down, enjoy a family dinner, and Pat was even quicker to cy at the thought of a baby than her son. To Pete’s immense relief, she didn’t seem to mind that it was so early in their relationship, or that they weren’t married. She didn’t even question how Pete had managed to get someone pregnant. Much like Patrick, the details didn’t seem to matter when there was a baby involved.

            Patrick went to bed before Pete, even though Pete was tired. He tried and failed to not feel jealous of Chicago, probably holding Patrick in a too-intimate hug for too long as they said goodbye, but even though it bothered him, Pete was in too good of a mood to feel upset for long.

            Everything seemed perfect, so Pete really should have suspected that something was going to go wrong and ruin everything. When he finally stood up to brush his teeth so that he could try and get some sleep alongside Patrick, he saw his reflection against the far wall. Pete started, and then, even as he was letting out a deep breath, he remembered that there was no mirror against that wall.

            Pete stared up at his egrigor, unspeaking and unmoving, frozen. The other Pete lifted one finger up to his lips, then turned to look at Patrick where he was sleeping. Pete shook his head in horror, and Not Pete laughed.

            “Sweet, isn’t he?” Not Pete asked, his voice low so as not to wake anyone. Pete wanted to scream, to wake the whole house up and to get the egrigoraway from them, away from Patrick. And yet, he did nothing. “Pretty, too. I wouldn’t mind keeping him with me again, maybe longer this time. What do you think?”

            “Get out,” Pete whispered. His mouth was dry, his voice without volume, like he was stuck in a nightmare. Except he was wide awake, and he couldn’t do anything to protect Patrick or himself.

            “I’m not going to do anything, not tonight,” Not Pete said. “I just couldn’t help but notice how happy you were all feeling, and I wanted to remind you,” he stepped up close, chest to chest with Pete, “Not to get complacent. The next time I take him there won’t be anyone left to come home to you.” He pointed to his head. “Not that there was much left this time.”

            “Leave him alone,” Pete said. Not Pete snorted.

            “You’re right, I should take someone else next time,” he said. “You think you know what loss feels like, Pete, but you haven’t felt real pain. Not yet.”

            He pushed Pete aside, walked to Patrick, and pressed his lips to Patrick’s forehead. Pete was shaking, but Not Pete moved in a blink, inhumanly fast.

            “We’ll be seeing you,” he promised, and then he vanished from sight.

            Patrick stirred a little in his sleep, and Pete smoothed his hair back, hands still trembling.

            “Something happen?” Patrick asked. His eyes hadn’t even opened all the way.

            “Don’t worry about it, baby,” Pete said. “Go back to sleep.”

            Pete kept his eyes fixed on the wall where he had first seen Not Pete, and he didn’t fall asleep until long after the sun rose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! It feels like I have so much to say, so I will try to organize my thoughts here.
> 
> First and foremost I want to thank my amazing beta, Mani, who has been such a fucking trooper through this NOVEL that I sent. Could not ask for anyone better to get me to chill out with my comma usage  
> On a related note, I have to thank all of you! For waiting on this update and being so gracious about the time it's taken. I know it's not as easy as you make it look, so I appreciate it more than I can say.
> 
> THWTH updates include: a discord channel??? There was a demand for one, so now we have a discord! All this information can be found on the story tumblr, but for those of you who avoid the hell site but want to hang out with other people and, idk, discuss theories, play cards against humanity, all that fun stuff, here's the link: https://discord.gg/NBYDnET
> 
> Life updates include: I got married!!!! I went on a honeymoon! I am a missus!!!! I started this story in high school guys life moves so fast I can't believe it
> 
> Other stuff? Yeah, sorry this didn't have a happy ending, haha. Aforementioned beta was distraught. ANd not to be too scary, but this was the reprieve chapter. Next time I'm back on my torturous bullshit. So. You've got that to look forward too.
> 
> Any thoughts and I would LOVE to hear about them in the comments, on the tumblr, or on the discord!!! Thank you again for all your patience <3 Thank you for reading.
> 
> Chapter title by The Beatles


	5. When It Rains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After making a nasty discovery at home, Fall Out Boy follows a trail of clues to Indiana to confront a potential adversary. Once there, the weather coupled with some unexpected enemies makes their night more complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for claustrophobia, drowning, and the usual graphic descriptions of violence and blood

            Since Pete made the decision, really and truly, that he wanted to keep his kid and be a father (father!), he and Patrick had been nesting. Pete sort of resented it when Travie used the word “nesting,” but it was an accurate term for what they were doing.

            For example, during their day off from recording, he and Patrick were not going out on the town or even marathoning Wes Anderson movies, but rather they were painting a nursery. Sunshine streamed through the windows, and it felt picture perfect.

            Yet, for all of Pete’s newfound domestic happiness, there was a darker side to his life. In the in-between times, while Patrick buried himself in production of other people’s albums, Pete went out with other friends, the kinds of friends who didn’t get involved with magic but knew a lot about having a good time and distracting Pete from his troubles by any means necessary. Pete was more careful with drugs after a few nasty incidents in the past, but still he found himself craving an escape from his own head. One such friend who lived nearby had a frankly alarming supply of LSD in his house, and Pete found that taking some before parties made him feel loose and happy. He could lose himself in the psychedelic colors and not think about the unbearable weight of responsibility pressing in on him from all sides. Patrick didn’t like it, so Pete usually stuck to weed, but he needed to de-stress. Every second he wasn’t actively chasing down happiness was consumed with despair. Worries that he wasn’t ready for a child, fear of the inevitable return of the egrigors… the anxious thoughts chased circles in Pete’s head until he felt physically ill. So, if Patrick said he was going to be out late, Pete made sure that he would be too.

            But there was nothing so dark about this day in particular. This day, on their day off, Pete and Patrick were painting the aforementioned nursery. Ashlee was seven months pregnant and deep in hiding from paparazzi, and the imminent arrival of a kid filled Pete with anxiety, both good and bad. When he was with Patrick, his thoughts leaned more towards the good, to the side of Baby! New human life in the world!

            The two of them had taken all the bland furniture out of one of the guest rooms in Pete’s house, and were turning it into a forest themed nursery. They went to Lowes in the middle of the night so as not to run into anyone and picked out lush green carpet that reminded them of fresh grass, and cans of paint and primer and stained plywood, fully intending to put the room together all by themselves.

            (As it turned out, carpeting a room was more difficult than they could possibly have realized, and they hired someone else to put it in, then immediately had to drape the floor in plastic so that they could get to painting.)

            Pete stood on top of a ladder, painting the ceiling a rich shade of blue that looked sunny in the day but deep indigo in the dark, while Patrick worked on the walls. The two of them had a playlist going that alternated songs picked out by each of them, which was almost a good compromise, until Patrick complained that Metallica songs were ten minutes long. (Which was part of why Pete suggested that compromise in the beginning.)

            “It’s just lucky neither of us got magicked into pregnancy,” Patrick said in the middle of a particularly long bridge. “Could you imagine nine months of Mozart? I mean, nothing against classical music, but it would get old.”

            “Hey, I’ve got some kind of magic sperm,” Pete said. “It could still happen.”

            “I am really going to need you to knock on wood after saying something like that,” Patrick said. Pete giggled, holding onto the ladder so as not to lose his balance.

            “Careful,” Patrick admonished. He turned away from Pete, invested in his painting job. They had very nearly commissioned some of their friends into painting on the finer details, but Patrick was adamant about doing as much as possible by themselves, so they would be adding trees once he finished the base coat. Clearly in a hurry to get to the fun part, Patrick was painting thoroughly, but quickly. He stretched up to the top corner of one of the walls, his shirt riding up on his stomach and baring some of the words on his back. _Stubborn. Helpless. Ugly_.

            Pete’s good mood popped like a balloon, and he turned back to his work on the ceiling. No, not everything was perfect, but that couldn’t be helped.

            Once the whole room was glistening with wet blue paint, they stopped for lunch , which was an exercise in the two of them attempting to learn how to cook before the kid arrived in their lives. Patrick had discovered an affinity for stir fry, but Pete still had trouble with anything more complicated than grilling veggie burgers and pouring out cereal. It was cozy with the two of them, warm and home-y.

            “What do you want to name him?” Patrick asked. Pete swallowed his food, which was salty from too much soy sauce, and shrugged.

            “Maybe something androgynous, because we still don’t know the gender,” Pete said. “Um, I’ve got something in mind, if it’s a boy.”

            “Yeah?” Patrick asked.

            Pete felt suddenly awkward. There was the issue of naming the kid, not a big issue, but an issue in that it was _his_ kid. Patrick was, without question, going to help raise the kid, and he was enthusiastic about it, but they hadn’t ever said it was their kid. Patrick insisted that it was Pete’s kid, and that he didn’t want to overstep that. At the same time, he was going to be a hell of a lot like the kid’s parent. They weren’t married, they had barely passed the year mark of dating, and yet. Yet.

            This specific situation was awkward because Pete knew what he wanted to call _his_ kid, but he wasn’t sure if they were having a discussion about it, or if Pete was telling Patrick. It was one of the many awkward conversations they hadn’t had yet. It was Pete’s kid, but it might also be their kid, but Pete already had a name thought out. It was all just too complicated to even think about, much less discuss when the two of them still skated across their conversations like thin ice, braced for it to crack at any moment.

            “Well, if it’s a boy,” Pete said slowly. “Then I kind of want to name him-”

            His phone started ringing, and with great effort, Pete did not say “saved by the bell” out loud. He answered without looking to make sure it was someone he knew instead of a telemarketer. Luckily, it was Joe.

            “We’ve got a problem,” Joe said, before Pete even got the chance to say hello.

            “What kind of problem?” Pete asked. The anxiety, that was always lurking just under the surface of his skin, bubbled up then, threatening to choke out his voice.

            Joe was silent for a beat too long, long enough for Pete to meet Patrick’s frightened gaze across the table.

            “I don’t think anyone’s hurt,” he said eventually. “But you’ve got to come down to the studio. Now.”

            Pass Studios wasn’t far from where they lived, so Pete and Patrick were there in record time. Their producer, Neil, was waiting outside, looking livid while he talked on the phone. Pete walked right past him into the studio, overhearing just a snatch of the conversation: “What _will_ it cover, then?”

            Pete’s anxiety had built up inside the back of his head like a second pulse point by the time they opened the door. He barely stepped inside before he stopped dead in the doorway. Patrick bumped into him, but clearly caught sight of it too.

            The studio had been destroyed. It was fine on the outside, but on the inside there was nothing but chaos. Guitars they had left overnight had been smashed, drum heads ripped apart, and the soundboard looked like it had been bashed in with a large, blunt instrument. Even the furniture had been kicked to matchsticks.

            The destruction was bad enough, but when Pete looked closer, stepping in over the body of one of his basses, he noticed that it was also deliberately messy. There was mud tracked across the carpet, pieces of everything were strewn about, papers scattered all over, plants and old leaves on the floor as well, for some reason, and on the walls there were words written in blood. Or, he realized, not words, but one word, written over and over and over again.

            His name.

            “I- I don’t…” Pete wanted to say something. An apology? Something furious? He didn’t really have the words. There were thousands, if not millions, of dollars’ worth of equipment shattered on the floor, not of their home studio, but of one they were renting. Wanton destruction of someone else’s and his own stuff, like an explosion had gone off, and it was very pointedly done with him in mind.

            What the hell was there for him to say?

            “Neil found it this morning,” Joe said. His voice sounded hollow, not that Pete could blame him. “I don’t think he’s mad at us, exactly. You know, assuming we pay for it all to get replaced.” Joe’s hands were shaking. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

            Pete hadn’t actually gotten far enough to wonder who had torn this microcosm of their world to shreds, but as soon as Joe said it, his mind was there. The destruction, the way it cut him right to the bone, the sight of all the broken instruments, even the words painted on the wall in red - maybe in blood. It fit.

            He reached his hand out to Patrick’s, but Patrick had walked past him, past Joe with haste like he’d remembered something more important than any of them, going straight to the computer.

            The computer.

            Pete felt like his heart stopped as he looked at it. The only expensive thing in the studio that hadn’t been smashed or ripped or otherwise destroyed, the heavy desktop looked suspiciously fine, almost too pristine. Deliberately avoided. And the computer was where all the tracks they had already put down were stored. The whole album, thus far.

            Patrick was a few steps ahead of Pete as he pulled up their folder. Pete looked over his shoulder. It was completely empty.

            Joe was a snarling stream of swear words, but Pete said nothing. He felt cold all over. Some part of him, he thought, should be grateful that no other band’s work had been erased, that the computer itself had survived, but he was numb to the thought.

            “It’s not that bad,” Patrick said. Pete was positive he has misheard.

            “Not that bad?” he repeated. “Not that bad?”

            Joe looked like he might punch Patrick, but Patrick just rolled his eyes and pulled something small and fluorescent orange out of his pocket.

            “It’s all backed up,” he said, tossing the USB stick to Joe. Joe turned it over, his aura slowly turning calmer colors once again. “I’ve got _everything_ backed up, so it’s weird that this stuff would get deleted off the computer at all.”

            “That means we know who it isn’t, then,” Andy said. Pete spun around. Andy was leaning in the doorway, apparently having just arrived. “The egrigors can see into our heads. They would’ve taken care of that.”

            “Which means,” Patrick said with a nod. “It’s somebody who knows us and who hates us, but it’s not them.”

            “Well, I suppose we’ve shortened the list by one,” Joe said, disgruntled. “That could be worse.”

            “Yeah, but it doesn’t answer the question of who did it,” Pete said. The recovery of the songs they had spent months on brought his voice back, and also managed to remind him that he was beyond pissed. This wasn’t a city street, this wasn’t an attack out in public, this was their studio. And now Pete’s name was scrawled all over it, graffitied above the senseless destruction.

            “Oh, I know who did it,” Andy said. He stepped over broken pieces of instruments, his flickering aura the only indication that he was upset. Pete could see that he was furious, but he was outwardly calm and collected. He stepped up to the wall and pointed to the Pete’s dripping name.

            “That’s not paint,” Andy said. “And it’s not blood, either. Or, not all blood, anyway. This is compulsion wine.”

            He pointed down at the floor, at the scattered leaves and the flowers blooming in patches of mud on the ground. “This is absolutely something to do with fae.”

 

            Joe and Andy came back to the house with Pete and Patrick. They had taken copious pictures, apologized over and over and over again to Neil, as well as promising to replace everything that had been ruined, down to the carpet and the wallpaper. Amongst the four of them, there was a shared aura, one brimming with anger and betrayal and the overwhelming feeling of an emotion Pete could only describe as “not in my fucking house” if he were to try and describe it out loud.

            Patrick loaded the drive into his computer, backing up the files yet again, while Pete and the others started to go over the photos they had taken. They didn’t want to outstay their welcome in the studio, and as much as Pete wanted to help clean up, he could tell by Neil’s aura that it would be better for them to leave.

            What Pete was most focused on were the pictures of the footprints. What he at first could have mistaken for random patches of mud, he was now certain were the footprints of something that wasn’t human. Made up mostly of three long lines, like the foot of a chicken but massive, they tapered off the further into the studio the prints were. And then, since they were dealing with fae, Pete knew better than to look exclusively for human tells.

            He wasn’t sure what sort of creature was three-toed and had feet like a bird, but he was positive it was fae. Andy was right. From the compulsion wine on the walls to the flowers on the floor, it all seemed to indicate fae. More than that, it indicated fae that had no problem being identified.

            They wanted Pete’s attention.

            “Hey, so the insurance company wants to speak to some of us,” Joe said. “Think you can, ah, convince them that the policy covers fae sabotage?”

            “I can try,” Pete said. He was massaging his temples, already exhausted, already desperate to go to sleep. He didn’t think charmspeak would work over the phone, but he did have to try, didn’t he?

            “What are you working on, Andy?” Pete asked, almost combative. It wasn’t as though drum kits were easier to replace than the other equipment, and it certainly wasn’t as though Andy was fine with their studio getting trashed. But Pete still felt petulant as he sifted through too much information, felt the too-heavy weight of his name.

            Andy seemed to sense this, and he regarded Pete with a cool and level gaze.

            “I’m looking up the flowers we found,” Andy said. He held up a small white blossom with a touch of yellow at its center. “If I can find out what all of them are, and if there’s one area they’re all native too, we’ll have an origin narrowed down.”

            Pete felt immediately ashamed, and he nodded.

            “That’s… great, thanks,” he said. He had too many tabs pulled open on his laptop, too many websites with garish pink and purple backgrounds talking about the “charming” fair folk, in the hopes that one of them might mention a creature with three toes.

            “This one is definitely bloodroot,” Andy said after a great deal more silence, only interrupted by the clacking of keyboards. He held up the white flower, turning it over a few times.

            “That’s an ominous name,” Pete noted.

            “They used to make dye with the roots,” Andy said. “It’s red inside. To be fair, it is also extremely poisonous.”

            “All right,” Joe said. “Pretty and poisonous, sounds like fae. Where’s it grow?”

            “The entire Eastern United States,” Andy said. “I’m guessing it would’ve been too easy if they’d given us something that only grew in, like, one city.”

            Andy held up another flower, this one smaller and a pale shade of purple.

            “This one I haven’t figured out yet, but-”

            “ _Lobelia inflata_ ,” Patrick said. He wasn’t even looking at the three of them, but his aura was buzzing with anxiety. Pete frowned, and Patrick slowly turned around.

            “I looked it up after the egrigors talked about it,” he said. “That was what they used. For poison, that night. I recognized it as soon as I saw it.”

            “And you didn’t think to tell me?” Andy said. Patrick shrugged.

            “You didn’t ask,” he said.

            A sick, cold sensation was settling into the pit of Pete’s stomach.

            “You do still think it’s fae, right?” he asked the room at large.

            “It has to be,” Patrick said, his voice fierce. “Look, why would they even bother deleting the files on the computer if they weren’t going to destroy my copies? It has to be someone that didn’t know I had a backup.”

            “But someone who knew you got poisoned,” Joe added.

            “Not necessarily,” Patrick said stubbornly. “That could just be a coincidence.”

            “Hell of a coincidence,” Joe said.

            “It’s a wildflower!” Patrick said. “And I didn’t get poisoned with bloodroot. So, unless the other flowers have some sort of significance, I don’t see why it shouldn’t just be a coincidence.”

            “Let’s just keep looking,” Pete said. He was nervous, but nervous either way, and they didn’t need to fight about it. Andy went back to matching up plants. Patrick put his headphones back on with a snap, and Joe went back to typing away, presumably sending some pretty desperate emails to label heads and insurance companies.

            Eventually, Pete gave in and started looking for creatures with three toes, and all that came up for the first page or so were sloths. But then a link to a cryptozoology website showed up, and he decided that he might as well look.

            According to the link, earlier that year there had been sightings of a creature all up and down the banks of the Wabash and Ohio rivers. It was listed as large, bipedal, pale and hairless, and supposedly, the footprints it left behind had three toes. The comments were full of naysayers, but Pete read over the article three times, drinking in the words. Riverbanks meant mud. If the creature were Unseelie, this could easily be their fairy.

            “I’ve got it,” he announced.

            “So have I,” Andy said. Pete frowned.

            “Northern Indiana?” he asked, not feeling very hopeful. It was a loose lead, and Andy had probably actually figured it out, but then Andy’s eyebrows raised.

            “Yes, actually,” he said. “That’s the one place I’m sure all of these grow.”

            “Oh, well, cool,” Pete said. “So, I haven’t got a name on our fae, but I’m pretty sure we’re looking for something pale and hairless and about seven feet tall.”

            “That sounds absolutely horrifying,” Joe said, but his voice was chipper. “Okay, I’m game for a hunting party, but can we narrow it down anymore? I mean, Indiana’s still a pretty big state. We can’t take a week off to go backpacking.”

            Just then, Patrick’s phone started ringing, and he stepped out of the room, looking, as always, pissed that he had to take off his headphones.

            “If it’s fae, we know to look in a forest,” Pete said. “So that narrows it down a little.”

            “Are we sure it’s fae, though?” Joe asked. “I mean, I want to go in prepared.”

            In fact, Joe looked sort of green at the mere thought of it not being fae, but Pete didn’t mention that.

            “There were a lot of flowers,” Andy said grimly. “All of them poisonous, all native to the Midwest. If they’re trying to send some other message, it’s lost on me. I think it really is just a coincidence that the same flower showed up here and, you know, earlier.” Andy paused for a second.

            “Though, um, having said that,” he continued. “Maybe we should think about whether or not we want to go, ah, charging off into battle.”

            “What do you mean?” Pete asked. Andy shrugged.

            “I just mean that… that maybe now isn’t the best time to go seeking out trouble.”

            Pete sat for a moment, trying to digest that.

            “We’re not- I really don’t think this qualifies as seeking out trouble,” Pete said, almost affronted. “Whoever did this trashed our studio, they painted my name on the walls in blood!”

            “I know, I know,” Andy said. “I’m not saying it’s unprovoked, but- but maybe we shouldn’t just walk into what’s obviously a trap to get revenge.”

            “No, I’m with Pete,” Joe said. “If we don’t do anything, then what’s to stop any other creature with a grudge from coming and taking it out on us?”

            A tension had grown in the room, everyone’s auras prickling. Pete wanted more than anything to diffuse the situation, but he wasn’t sure what he could say that would help. That he didn’t want to fight, but this felt more defensive than anything?

            Once again, he was spared from having to say something uncomfortable, this time by Patrick walking into the room.

            “That was Neil,” Patrick said. “And, um, I think I know where this thing came from.”

            “Northern Indiana?” Joe guessed blandly.

            “Fort Wayne, to be specific,” Patrick said. Pete raised his eyebrows.

            “What makes you say that?” he asked.

            Patrick held up his cell phone, where Pete could see a picture from the studio.

            “It was carved into the walls underneath the compulsion wine,” Patrick said. “He thought we’d want to know.”

            Andy looked at all the plants he had just spend a good three hours categorizing and heaved a deep sigh.

            “It’s a good thing we don’t solve mysteries,” Patrick said. “So, when do we leave?”

            Pete still hated flying, and the fastest trip to Indiana involved a three-hour layover in Atlanta, which meant more time in crowded airports. By the time they landed in Indianapolis, Pete was all edges. Gritted teeth and tapping fingers and a desperate desire to curl up under a blanket. It was already getting dark out, and Pete was tempted to just ask to get a hotel rather than explore at night. But none of them wanted to stay in the Midwest for long, and none of them were very tired, so spending the night made no sense.

            Still, Pete was nervous, and Patrick was moreso. Every time they were in the dark, Patrick’s aura flared with nerves, flickering neon yellow/green around him at best and flaring panicked orange at worst. Pete had learned how to sleep with the lights on and scheduled their days without any driving at night, but Patrick just tried harder around the others to pretend nothing had happened. Because of Patrick putting on his perpetual brave face, Pete was certain that he would be furious if Pete tried to suggest taking a break, so he sucked it up and kept quiet.

            (In any case, Pete didn’t like to linger on the thought of Patrick hiding things from Joe and Andy. If he was hiding things from them, then how much, Pete wondered, was Patrick hiding from him? He couldn’t stand not knowing, but couldn’t bear to ask.)

            The sun was setting as they got in the rental car at the airport and began the drive up to Fort Wayne, not a very long commute, but enough that it would be fully dark by the time they got there. Pete chanced a look at Patrick, who, from the mix of determination and apprehension in his aura, had also realized this, and was planning on gritting his teeth and sticking it out. Pete longed for the buffer of having Gabe and Jon around. He imagined that it would be a lot easier for Patrick to deal with this if there were more than just the three of them after dark.

            They stopped at the first hotel they found, and by that point Patrick was already static-y with nerves, angry edges in the dark.

            “We all good with a Holiday Inn?” Joe asked, and Patrick flinched before nodding.

            “Fine,” Pete said. He couldn’t even blame Patrick for being a little edgy, he thought as they got out of the car, pulling sparse overnight bags out of the trunk. It felt unnaturally dark, the clouds heavy and oppressive over them, blocking out any sign of the moon or stars. They checked into a room with two beds and had barely dropped their things on the floor before Joe was in full pack-leader mode.

            “Right,” he said. “So there’s a forest just north of town. It’s a little late, but they might not be expecting us yet. Fae tend to like forests and countryside better than inner cities, yeah?”

            “Generally,” Pete said. “But, don’t you think-”

            “I saw a Walmart on our way in, so we can stop and grab flashlights,” Joe continued. “The forest isn’t big, but it seems more likely than farmland. It shouldn’t be too hard for us to cover it tonight.”

            “It might rain,” Andy said. Joe made a face.

            “I figured we could just get it over with,” he said. “But would you guys rather wait?”

            Pete would, but he wasn’t particularly inclined to say as much. Joe looked out at them and nodded.

            “Iron?” he asked. Patrick tapped the hilt of his knife. He’d gotten a nice sheath on a belt, something Pete hadn’t noticed before. Andy pulled his sword from his bag - carefully glamoured so that it could get through airport security - and strapped it to his back. Pete reluctantly pulled his whip out of his backpack and fixed a small iron cap onto the end of it - not enough to kill, but enough that it would burn like hell if he hit any fae with it.

            “Right,” Joe said. “Nobody’s hungry, right? If we get captured, it could be a long night, and-”

            “No eating fae food, yeah, we got it,” Patrick said. “We’re good.”

            “Okay,” Joe said. He poured a handful of bullets into his left pocket and jammed his pistol into the right. “Let’s go hunting.”

            The mood wasn’t that solemn, Pete knew objectively. Andy and Joe were having a good time, actually, singing off-key to T. Rex on an oldies station. By the time they actually got into the Walmart, everything seemed sort of good. They were well into the store before Joe pointed out that it _maybe_ wasn’t the smartest thing in the world for the entirety of Fall Out Boy, carrying visible weapons, to walk into a Walmart in the middle of nowhere, where anyone could see them. Yet, in spite of the security guard hanging by the doors and the enormous selection of Pete Wentz posters in the decor section, no one so much as glanced at them.

            Patrick made a beeline for the posters - four feet tall images of Pete’s face, thick with makeup and sulking at the camera - and he grabbed one, a delighted look on his face. Pete braced himself, while Patrick grinned at the other three.

            “Babe,” he said, “We’re gonna hang this up in our bedroom.”

            “We are absolutely fucking not,” Pete said.

            “Aw, come on!” Patrick said. He had one hand pressed against the protective plastic covering poster-Pete’s cheek. “I want a Pete Wentz poster to kiss goodnight.”

            “You have the real thing,” Pete said, trying to sound stern and not to laugh so loud that they’d attract attention.

            “Yeah, _Patrick_ ,” Joe said accusingly. “You’ve got the real thing. I’m the one that needs this poster hanging over my bed.”

            Pete gave up on not laughing, all four of them doubled over and shushing each other. There were a couple of high school aged girls in the next aisle, and still giggling, they grabbed the cart and wheeled it quickly away. Pete did double check to make sure no one had thrown in the poster, though.

            They went to the camping section only for flashlights. But after picking up four industrial lights and two smaller, keychain flashlights for he and Patrick, Pete wandered over to the other supplies. They wouldn’t need (he hoped) any sort of camping food or tents, but Pete was feeling anxious, and he wanted to be overprepared. He didn’t know what might possibly come in handy, so he pulled items off the shelf at random: a shallow water anchor, some neon yellow nylon rope, a bundle of army green tarp, and a small backpack to put it all in.

            They briefly passed the toy aisle on their way out, and Joe picked up a lightsaber. It turned bright blue with a static-y whoosh, and he held it up in front of his face.

            “Guys, put back one of the flashlights,” he said. “The Force is the only light I need to see by.”

            “Those batteries are going to die like… three feet into the woods.” Patrick said.

            “Have a little faith in the Force,” Joe said. The toy lightsaber flickered.

            “The Force isn’t that strong with you,” Andy advised, and they checked out their camping supplies with a bemused looking cashier.

            Patrick’s aura flickered with anxiety when they stepped outside again, but he seemed a little calmer, and all of them were doing well, their auras meshing and merging with each other in more unity than Pete had seen in a long time.

            Joe followed the GPS system south of the city and to the edge of a dark forest, pulling his car off onto the shoulder of the road. It looked innocuous enough, Pete thought, for a dark forest. There were buzzing street lights visible by the treeline, and they had passed a hospital not a mile back, which was good information to remember for later.

            “Everyone ready?” Joe asked. He heaved one of the enormous flashlights out in front of him, turned it on, and Pete promptly realized it was way too bright.

            “We are going to get arrested for trespassing if we use that,” Pete said. “At least till we’re deeper in the forest.”

            Patrick’s head snapped over to Pete, but it wasn’t as though Pete could take it back.

            Joe looked at the beam, brighter than a headlight, and made a chagrined face.

            “See, you guys should’ve let me buy the lightsaber,” he said. He glanced up at the sky, which was still heavy with clouds, but not that dark due to all the light pollution.

            “We turn them on deeper in the forest?” he suggested.

            “I wish that, just for once, every episode of our lives didn’t play out like the first five minutes of a slasher movie,” Patrick grumbled. He was tense, but still handling it. The group of them put their flashlights back into the backpack Pete bought, and set off towards the woods, Pete and Patrick holding aloft their smaller lights.

            It didn’t take them long to find a deer trail, just wide enough for them to walk down single file into the heart of the forest. They agreed, in hushed voices, that it was probably best if they kept the flashlights off until they could no longer see the lights from cars driving past on the road they parked on, though this involved a lot of Joe running face first into spiderwebs and cursing loudly.

            They had been walking largely in silence for about five minutes before Pete felt the first splash against the back of his neck, so sudden that he jumped and shouted.

            “Pete!” Joe spun to face him, and Patrick turned the flashlight on him. Pete glanced around but saw nothing around them except shadowy trees.

            “Sorry,” he said. “I just felt water, and - oh.”

            Another drop splatted on top of Pete’s head. He glanced up and got hit in the eye with a heavy raindrop. Within seconds, it was pouring down on all of them.

            “You know,” Andy said. “I did tell you it might rain.”

            “Oh, shut up,” Joe said, and then he sighed. “Shit.”

            Pete shrugged off his backpack and held it over his head as a makeshift umbrella.

            “Look,” Andy said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Maybe we should just head back to the hotel for the night?”

            Pete opened his mouth to agree, but Joe was already shaking his head.

            “We’re already out here,” he said. “Let’s at least try and go a little further, yeah? Five minutes, and then we turn around.”

            “No,” Patrick said. Pete was openly shocked but tried not to look so. “We should go back. It’s raining, it’s dark, it’s gonna be cold. Let’s just get here early in the morning.”

            Pete would have cheered if Joe had looked just a little less angry.

            “Fine,” Joe said, exasperated. “Let’s just head back, then.”

            They turned around, Pete in the lead this time. The rain was pouring, making it hard to see even with the glow of the mini-flashlight he was carrying. Water came down in sheets, nearly as thick as a shower, and Pete was about to suggest they break out one of the industrial flashlights anyway when he saw a flash of white just ahead of him on the trail.

            Pete stopped, thrusting his arms out to stop the guys behind him.

            “What?” Joe said. Even his words sounded wet through all the rain.

            “I saw something up there,” Pete said.

            “Look,” Joe sighed. “Whatever you think you saw-”

            Something white stepped out onto the trail, not a flash this time, but a slow moving mass. Whatever it was, tall and broad and blurry in the rain, was almost human. It was bipedal, but hulking, and a uniform shade of pallid gray that reminded Pete of maggots.

            Also, it was turning to face them.

            “Oh,” Joe said in a squeak of a voice.

            Pete stepped back onto Andy’s toes, causing all of them to stumble, crashing through the branches on the sides of the deer path. The thing cocked its head and started walking towards them, every footfall squelching loudly in the mud.

            “Fucking run!” Pete yelled, and they took off back into the forest.

            Pete couldn’t hear anything following them, but the sound of pouring rain was so loud that he couldn’t take any comfort in that. As they ran, the terrain started to slope downwards, and soon Pete was sliding as much as he was running, occasionally catching his balance on Joe’s shoulder.

            They were hindered by having Patrick running in the front, slow for Pete and way too slow for a werewolf and a vampire, but it ensured that no one was getting left behind.

            Eventually Pete turned around and saw nothing but the darkness. He was about to tell the others they could stop, or at least slow down, but then he heard a roaring coming from his right side. Pete slowed and turned to look.

            “Guys?” he shouted. They slowed down as well, looking where Pete did, but he couldn’t see anything, just the thick sheets of rain. Pete wasn’t sure what the roaring was - the rain couldn’t get any heavier, could it? - but then Joe screamed.

            “What the fuck is that?!”

            Pete didn’t get to ask for clarification. The water he saw streaming wasn’t just the thickening of the rain, but an actual wall of water. A tidal wave crashing through the forest, barrelling towards them. Pete held his breath and closed his eyes as the water slammed into him and pulled him off his feet.

            Caught underwater, Pete was tossed almost instantly into a tree, his back slamming painfully against the trunk. The only good thing was the wall of water receded as fast as it had come. Only a few seconds passed before the water was gone, and Pete fell onto the soupy forest floor, coughing and sputtering.

            Unbelievably, it was still raining.

            Pete blinked water out of his eyes and looked around for the guys so that they could start on finding the fastest way out, trail or no trail. But then, as he looked, he realized he could see nothing but the forest.

            “Guys?” Pete shouted. He stood up, just as sopping wet as if he had just climbed out of a swimming pool.

            “HELLO?!” he screamed. The pounding of the rain was so loud that he couldn’t even hear his voice echo back to him. Pete started jogging forward, or tried to. The mud was so slick and deep that he kept sliding or getting stuck, so he ended up settling for a hurried walk, though he had no clue if he was going in the right direction.

            “Is anyone there?” he yelled.

            They had been surrounded by trees. The wave that had crashed on them was big, but it had knocked Pete into a tree almost instantly. His band couldn’t be that far away.

            “HELLO?!” Pete shouted again. He thought he heard someone shout back in response and Pete began to walk in that direction, only falling to his hands and knees once or twice.

            And then, through the rain, he heard Patrick’s scream split the night in half.

***

            Patrick wasn’t sure where he had washed up, but he was on top of a thick and thorny patch of undergrowth, and it took him a good few minutes to get his wet clothes untangled from the brambles. He was so focused on the task of getting unstuck and upright that he didn’t even notice he was alone until he was standing.

            Then, he realized that he was alone. In the dark.

            Only a little frantic, he started clicking the button on his miniature flashlight, to no avail. The plastic clamshell case it came in had boasted that it was “Water Resistant,” but Patrick suspected that being completely enveloped in cold, dirty water was more than the thing could handle. He didn’t even want to think about his phone, and he took a brief moment to be grateful that almost every other electronic device he had brought was safe in the dry hotel room.

            Patrick couldn’t even try one of the bigger flashlights, because they were all in Pete’s backpack. So, it was dark. A dark, shadowy forest, with no one near him.

            (No one to hear him scream.)

            But Patrick was going to be _fine_. He kept telling himself he would be fine, because he _had_ to be fine.

            “Is anyone out there?” he called. His voice sounded pathetically quiet in the roar of the rain, but he was a singer in a rock band, so he took a deep breath and tried again.

            “ANYONE OUT THERE?!” he yelled. No response. At least, none he could hear with human ears.

            He was going to be fine, he was going to be fine.

            Assuming the tidal wave had pushed him backwards, he started walking forwards, one step of unsticking his foot from the mud at a time. He was starting to regret the sneakers he wore, clunky and not laced nearly tight enough for him to navigate the mud. But in a weird way, the sneakers and the mud were helping. As long as he had a task to focus on, something methodical and physical that took a little bit of focus, he didn’t have to think about being alone, in the dark, or how vulnerable he was. Because they couldn’t get him again. Wouldn’t get him again.

            Patrick sensed something was wrong before it happened. Aside from the obvious issue of the tidal wave and the pale, hairless bigfoot, and the rain, something was… off. Patrick was listening for the sound of his band when he realized that the forest had gone very quiet. The rain grew calmer, but there were no other sounds in the forest, no distressed birds or scurrying animals. He heard a rustle in the trees behind him, but when he turned, he saw no movement, no flicker of eyes reflecting back at him in the darkness.

            “Pete?” Patrick called. He heard Pete giggle through the copse of trees.

            “Trip no further, pretty sweeting,” Pete called, his voice dreamy as it carried through the rain. And then Patrick was overwhelmed with the scent of Pete’s cologne, and the black eyes were inches from his face, hands like steel clamps wrapped around his arms.

            “Journeys end in lovers meeting,” Not Pete said, smiling a brilliant smile of bright white teeth.

            Patrick screamed.

            Patrick’s vision went white, the volume came back to the forest and then grew, overwhelming so that his ears were full of a roaring like a waterfall, interrupted only by the sound of Pete's laughter. His sight faded to gritty static, and all he could hear was rushing water and awful, triumphant laughter.

          Patrick came to in the mud, crumpled and curled in on himself and shaking. There were four tall figures overshadowing him, looming. And Patrick, he had fainted. He lost his one, slim chance of making an escape by being so fucking scared that he _fainted._ And they were going to _take him back they came to get him to take him torture him keep him forever he couldn't do it didn't want the pain he couldn't couldn't couldn't couldn't-_

            "Patrick," Not Pete sang. "Stay awake for me now, baby. Don't cry, not yet."

            But Patrick couldn't help crying, try as he did to take a deep breath, to keep himself calm. One of the looming figures behind him bent down and yanked Patrick up to his feet by his armpits. Patrick's legs wouldn't hold him, his feet slipping in the mud, his knees buckling beneath him. The second the rough hands were no longer supporting him, he fell back onto his ass, barely able to even see through the haze of the rain. But it would be hard to miss the tall, skinny figure, the silvery blonde hair of his egrigor as he stood back up, leaving Patrick on the ground.

            "He's such a baby," Not Patrick said. "Look at him and he pisses himself. Talk to him and he faints. Not even gonna stand? Not gonna try to fight?"

            "Patrick," Not Pete said, his voice warning. "They're on their way."

            "Let him have some fun," Not Joe said. "He's going stir crazy without anything to play with."

            Not real, not real, none of this was real, Patrick thought to himself. Just his band, they weren't going to hurt him. But then he saw a foot raised in the darkness, felt a blow against his ribs, heard a crack like a tree branch breaking, and realized a few seconds after he had started screaming that he was making the noise and this was NOT his band, it was the egrigors and the overwhelming realization that they had him they had him they had him AGAIN was too much to bear, and whether due to his ribs or his panic he couldn't breathe, couldn't stand couldn't move.

            Patrick realized, somewhere in the haze of terror, that he wanted to die, would rather be struck down by lightning than taken back by them. His heart hummed more than it pounded, it was beating so fast, and he kept his face turned down towards the ground. _No more, no more._

            “Thought you liked to play with pretty things,” Pete said, his voice petulant. No, not Pete, this was Not-Pete.

            “He’s bait for the pretty things,” Not Patrick said. He leaned in, held his face just in front of Patrick’s. “What are you crying about? We haven’t done anything yet?”

            He flashed the blade of a knife at Patrick, reflecting the moonlight even as it dripped with rain. Not one of Patrick’s knives, for once, but something that looked objectively evil, curved inwards like a thin, powerful claw. Not Patrick hooked the curled-in tip of the blade on the collar of Patrick’s t-shirt. He started to pull, straining the fabric of the shirt, but-

            “Patience,” Not Joe said. He hauled Patrick back to his feet and held him there. “We can hardly start the show before the audience gets here.”

            Patrick closed his eyes and wished for death. _Audience_. Like getting tortured wasn’t enough. He couldn’t go through all this in front of his band, he couldn’t.

            “Aw, he’s shy,” Not Patrick said. “What, you don’t want your little boyfriend to come and see you?”

            Patrick was only standing because Not Joe was holding him up. He was slumped over, his head hanging forward. The useless, embarrassing tears were slowing, and he thought that at least it was raining, at least no one else would see. They hadn’t gagged him, but he didn’t bother screaming. Maybe they would get lost. Maybe at least no one else would have to see him like this.

            “Fat chance,” Not Patrick said. He lunged forward and stabbed Patrick in the thigh, the blade plunging into his flesh so deep that he thought it might have come out on the other side if it were straight. Patrick couldn’t hold back a scream, thrashing in Not Joe’s arms but the egrigor held him tight.

            “Stop!” he shouted. Not Patrick held his gaze and twisted the blade. Patrick screamed again but cut himself short, biting down on his lip.

            “Playtime’s over,” Not Patrick said. Patrick could hear a crashing through the trees and he slammed his eyes shut, praying for this to not be happening, hoping beyond hope that he could wake up from this, like it was a bad dream that would just end.

            Of course, he knew it wasn’t. But it didn’t stop him from hoping.

            “PATRICK!”

            Patrick flinched from the sound. “Victim” and “damsel” burnt like they were fresh on his side and the top of his thigh. He never once thought he could miss the horrors of the godawful room they kept him in, but he did now.

            “Patrick!”

            “You motherfucking-”

            “Hey, boys!” Pete said. Not Pete? Patrick wouldn’t open his eyes. “You’re late. Again. Tell me, Patrick, do they ever show up on time?”

            Patrick told himself not to be a coward, the word “coward” searing against his shoulder, and he looked up and fought to keep his expression flat.

            Not Patrick stood between Patrick and his band, his back to Patrick. Patrick didn’t want to focus on the faces of the rest of his band, but he could see degrees of fear and anger in each of them. The water had carried off his hat, so there was really nothing to hide Patrick’s eyes, nothing to shield him from the faces of the worst crowd he’d ever faced.

            “And just so we’re all clear,” Not Joe said, holding a different knife to Patrick’s throat. “None if you should step any closer than where you are right now.”

            “You can’t kill him,” Joe said, and he raised his foot to step forward anyway. Not Joe lowered the knife down, somewhere by Patrick’s crotch.

            “No, we can’t kill him,” he said, the anger in the statement barely hidden. “But I imagine we could cut off something he could live without, like his hand or his cock.”

            Joe stepped backwards.

            “Patrick, you’re so quiet,” Not Andy said, his voice light with amusement. “What, no snarky comeback?”

            Patrick didn’t respond, and Not Joe pressed the knife closer to his jeans.

            “I’m gonna need an answer,” he said.

            “Not at the moment,” Patrick said. He didn’t sound like he’d been crying, but he also had no volume. His voice was just a whisper.

            “Guys, we’re all together again!” Not Patrick said, obscenely cheery. “It’s like a little family reunion. We should catch up.”

            Not Joe nodded behind Patrick and moved the knife long enough to rip the hoodie Patrick was wearing off. Not Patrick moved up to him and ripped his t-shirt in half down the front, his cruel looking knife cutting through the fabric effortlessly.

            “Patrick hasn’t been very forthcoming with you, has he?” Not Pete asked. His voice came from behind Patrick, the worst of the four of them. He sounded so much like Pete, and when Patrick couldn’t see him-

            “C’mon, Pete. You think about it, don’t you? It bothers you. Do ever tell Patrick how downright ungrateful you think he is, that you care for him twenty-four-seven and he won’t even speak to you?” Patrick felt his lips against his ear, heard his lowered voice. “Won’t even fuck you?”

            “It’s okay that you all think he’s being whiny about this,” Not Pete said, raising his voice again. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing you’ve ever thought about him. And certainly not as bad as what he thinks about you. How could you not hate the people who…. But wait. Patrick, he hasn’t told them about that, has he?”

            “No,” Not Patrick said. “He’s kept it quiet, for some reason. Patrick, why don’t you explain?”

            Patrick tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs weren’t obeying. It was so wet and so cold and if he looked up he would see his band looking confused and scared and _pitying_ , and he couldn’t do this.

            He felt a blade cut into the side of his thigh and he grunted, unwilling to open his mouth lest he start crying or screaming.

            “Explain what?” he whispered.

            “Tell your boyfriend what all these pretty words mean,” Not Patrick said. He traced over the word “human” with the tip of his knife, scratching, but not quite drawing blood.

            “Well,” Patrick said. His throat was dry his face was hot and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. “‘Human’ generally means a bipedal mammal from the primate family who-”

            Something struck him across the face, hard enough to bruise. Somewhere in front of him, Pete made a pained sound like it was him who had been hit instead of Patrick.

            “Keep showing off in front of your boyfriend and we’ll take him instead,” Not Patrick growled.

            “The cuts-” Patrick said. There was still no volume to his voice, but he tried. “The cuts are mine. They’re the words I’ve thought- thought about myself.”

            He kept his eyes fixed on the ground. The hands holding him up were holding him too tight, leaving bruises, he was sure.

            “Unbelievable, isn’t it, that this idiot-” Not Patrick dug his knife into the “I” a little, drawing blood, “-figured it out in a couple of hours, and in six months none of you guessed.”

            The silence was overwhelming.

            “And what about the burns?” Not Pete asked, his voice soft and deceptively sweet. Patrick had thought he wasn’t talking about this for his own sake, not out of any noble thoughts of protecting his band, but in that moment he realized that he really, truly, didn’t want to hurt them with the truth.

            “They’re….” Patrick cleared his throat, still quiet. “The burns are the words that… everyone else thought.”

            “Everyone else?” Not Pete asked.

            “Everyone else in my band,” Patrick said.

            “Look at them and tell them who thought those words,” Not Joe said. Patrick looked up, eyes open but unseeing.

            “The burns are the words that you guys thought,” he said.

            He heard Andy whisper “Jesus,” but his eyes were too blurred by the water to see the looks on their faces. He was grateful he wasn’t Joe, with his pack bond, or Pete with all the glowing auras. He didn’t want to see the effect it had.

            “Careful where your thoughts go,” Not Joe drawled. “We can remind him just what you think of him. You, for example, thought _weak_ and _annoying_ and _helpless_ and while I didn’t write _full of himself_ , I let him know that the word _conceited_ was seconded. In any case, Joe, he’s not that _weak_ right now.”

            Something burning hot was tracing across the old scar on Patrick’s chest and he screwed up his face, biting down hard to keep from screaming. W - E - A - K, still flaring up over the old scar.

            “Fear is just good at keeping people in line,” he finished. “Maybe we should just get syringes when it’s your turn.”

            “Aw, Patrick,” Pete - Not Pete? - was in his ear. “He doesn’t mean it. Just like Pete probably doesn’t mean ‘pitiful.’” He pulled away. “Or like how Pete doesn’t mean _stubborn_ or _overbearing_ or _useless_ , right?”

            “Stop it!” Andy shouted. “What do you want?!”

            “We wanted to gloat,” Not Joe said.

            “Don’t you think he deserves to know as much as you do?” Not Andy asked. “Like how you think he’s a _victim_ , and he’s _lazy_.” Hip to collar, he could feel the burns all over, his skin was crawling with them.

            “But if you’d rather we just move to the next part of the plan…” he tied Patrick’s hands behind his back with rough rope, and Patrick didn’t cry out when he pulled too tight. While he bound Patrick, taking care to be as rough as possible, Not Patrick was speaking to the band.

            “Thanks for hot tip about Indiana, by the way,” he said. “We didn’t trash your studio, in case you were wondering, but we saw an opportunity we just couldn’t pass up. Well, two opportunities, really.”

            Not Joe took Patrick’s chin and forced his face up so he could see the tiny speck of neon orange that Not Patrick was holding aloft. His USB drive.

            All the fight flooded back into Patrick at once. He was kicking and writhing and shouting, half-wordless, half: “Give it back don’t touch that you son of a bitch bastard cunt!”

            “See, he’s still feisty when he cares,” Not Patrick said. Then, turning to the rest of the band: “Not that he cares much about himself anymore. Now, this has been backed up again, but does anyone think they can beat me back to California?”

            “Don’t you fucking dare!” Patrick shouted. That wasn’t just everything they had of their new album thus far, it was loads of stuff that wasn’t on their producer’s computer - Patrick things, music he’d worked on by himself, for himself. Years of it. “Give it to me I swear to god-”

            “Pete, sweetness, can you shut him up?” Not Patrick asked over Patrick’s threats. Not Pete clapped a hand over Patrick’s mouth, and then kissed him on the cheek.

            “Hush, baby, it’s okay, everything’s okay,” Not Pete said. Patrick was still thrashing as much as he could but held fast.

            Not Patrick walked over to Patrick, holding the USB up between his thumb and forefinger. He looked at Not Pete, and the hand over Patrick’s mouth was removed. Not Patrick held Patrick’s face in his free hand, keeping them eye to eye.

            “Beg for it,” he breathed. Patrick’s chest was heaving, and he kept his lips shut tight for half a second before caving in.

            “Please,” he said. “Please don’t. I’ll do anything.”

            “Good boy,” Not Patrick said. And he pinched the USB to splinters under his fingers.

            Not Patrick pulled Patrick out of Not Joe’s arms, kicking and screaming obscenities as he was, and held him fast. Tiny shards of orange plastic littered the mud at their feet, and Patrick was definitely crying again, stupid pathetic worthless human crybaby, but he didn’t care, because most of his reason to care just got crushed in front of him. They were still talking, the egrigors and his band, but Patrick couldn’t really distinguish the words anymore.

            “...say goodbye to your boyfriend!”

            Patrick looked up, saw his Pete’s horrified face, and then realized they were moving. Just like he had feared for months, the egrigors were taking him again, reopening all the old wounds. They were running through the dark woods, and Not Patrick was half carrying and half dragging Patrick along. His feet were technically touching the ground, as evidenced by one of his overpriced shoes disappearing in the mud behind them, but he wasn’t running. He was just existing. Just waiting for it to stop.

            Even if someone was following them, they couldn’t keep up with Not Patrick. Patrick wanted to be fast, he reasoned dully. Faster than a vampire. Who would be able to keep up with him?

            It was eventually just the two Patricks, stopped alone at the edge of a small, round clearing in the trees. There was a circle of bare, wet ground in front of them, no moonlight coming through the break in the trees, only more rain.

            “You’ve gotten more pathetic,” Not Patrick said. “At least last time you fought.” Patrick didn’t respond, and Not Patrick grabbed his face again.

            “Hey, bitch,” he said. “You’ll listen when I speak to you.” He ran a hand through Patrick’s hair. “I thought we should shave this, just to up the dehumanization, but then, what would my boyfriend have to pull on?”

            As if the words had summoned them, the other egrigors appeared on the edges of the clearing.

            “We don’t have long,” Not Joe said. “How is he?”

            “Dissociated,” Not Patrick said. “Barely even scared anymore.”

            “That’s fine,” Not Pete said. “We’ve got the others terrified. But we need to get back.”

            “I can get started,” Not Patrick said brightly. He kissed Not Pete and then tore off, back into the forest.

            That left Patrick leaned up against a tree. His hands were tied, but his legs weren’t. He could have run, but he felt strangely numb. Frozen and braced for the next horror to present itself to him.

            “Baby,” Not Pete said. “I’m sorry, but this is gonna hurt.”

            Then, with all his might, he kicked Patrick’s ankle and snapped it. Even as white spots burst all over Patrick’s vision and he screamed with renewed pain, he thought to himself “ _You’ve got to be fucking kidding me_.”

            Then, while he was still dazed, his mouth still open in a cry of pain, he felt someone shove him from behind and he fell, face first, into the muddy clearing. He tried to sit up to get out of the mud, and his body tensed with fear as he discovered that all sitting up did was cause him to sink deeper. Not a muddy clearing, but a pit of mud, he realized. Thin, almost gel-like mud into which his legs sank deeper and deeper, the pull of it exacerbating the pain in his ankle.

            Patrick looked up at the three egrigors, terrified, and all three of them were laughing.

            “Technically, this isn’t killing you,” Not Pete said. “And we won’t be devastated if you survive. Turns out keeping you around to play with is kinda fun. But, ah, we don’t know how deep that is. If you’re just too _weak_ to save yourself, that’s not really us killing you.”

            Patrick tried to move again, but he kept sinking. Even having forced himself to squirm upright, he was already waist deep, unable to move.

            Not Pete leaned far over the edge and kissed Patrick. Patrick was too deep in the mud to even pull away from him.

            “You guys go on ahead,” Not Pete said. “I want to see how my lover does.”

            “I don’t- you’re not-” Patrick couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do goddamn anything. The only part of him that wasn’t bone deep cold was the still burning word “weak” on his chest.

            Not Joe and Not Andy melted into the trees, and Not Pete stood up, looking down at him, expressionless. Patrick couldn’t struggle if he wanted to. And he didn’t want to. He wanted nothing but to be home, to be with his Pete, and maybe to sob for an hour or so.

            He had sunk in the mud up to his chest and thought to himself that he thought he once heard how to escape quicksand by floating, but this sticky mudpit wasn’t dry sand. In any case, Not Pete would probably just push him back under if he started getting out. It might kill him faster, but Patrick wanted to prolong his death of drowning in thick, foul smelling mud as long as was physically possible.

            He was nearly shoulder deep in the mud when he heard a crash in the forest. Not Pete spun around and gasped. When Patrick craned his neck, he could see it, just a blur of white at the edge of his vision.

            “The fuck… is that?” Not Pete whispered.

            No sooner had he spoken than an unearthly wail rang out, an awful, gurgling noise. It wasn’t mermish, but it sounded distinctly watery. Not Pete glanced at Patrick.

            “Oh, fuck that,” he said, and he disappeared. Leaving Patrick alone with the monster.

            Neck deep in mud, with his ankle broken and his hands tied and the white creature lurching closer to him, Patrick started laughing. He was crying too, snot and dirt dripping into his mouth, but he was laughing. Of course. Of fucking course.

            The creature walked to the edge of the mud, throwing one whole side of its body forward with each step, like walking was an arduous task. White and towering, as it got close, Patrick could see that it looked slimy, as though its whole body was covered in mucus. It made another gurgling sound, and Patrick looked up at its face, or where its face should have been. It wasn’t entirely faceless, actually. It had a gash where its mouth would be if it were human, and two sunken holes in the place of eyes - no, there were eyes, tiny, deep set glittering black dots in its huge sockets. A flat expanse rather than a nose, and thin flaps of skin on its neck. The only break in the uniform white of the creature was the black of its eyes, and a greenish grey sort of loincloth.

            It sloshed up to Patrick, and started to lean down. It put its face right up to Patrick’s, so close he could smell its breath, an overwhelming stench of sewage water and rot. Then, suddenly, it pulled back and slogged away from him.

            The hysterical laughter bubbled up in Patrick’s throat again, but this time it was mixed with more crying than before. Soon it wasn’t laughter at all, just tears as the mud reached his chin. _Pathetic whiny crybaby_. He would be thinking about the egrigors while he died after all.

            Patrick opened his mouth and screamed, though his throat was sore and rough.

            “GUYS!” he shouted. His voice echoed back at him in the vast expanse of the forest, no other sound but the rain audible.

            “GUYS!” he screamed. His throat felt like it was ripping itself apart, and tears smarted at the edge of his eyes.

            “PETE!” he cried. He slipped a little lower into the mud, and let out another wordless cry, a plea for help. But no one was coming to save him.

            _No one was coming to save him_.

            He took a shuddering breath but ended up with a mouthful of mud. He managed to splutter and cough it out, but he knew he didn’t have much longer in the open air. Patrick kicked experimentally and found he could move his legs a little. It was dragging, and impossibly slow, but he could still move more than he thought. His bound hands were a problem, though.

            He moved his legs again, and the broken ankle made it agonizing, but it was possible. He managed to push himself minutely closer to the edge of the mud. But he needed his hands free.

            Patrick still had his knife, he realized. But it was strapped to the front of his belt, impossible to reach with his hands tied behind his back. The mud had risen over his mouth by then, and he had to keep his head tilted back so he could still breathe through his nose.

            If he leaned forward, he thought, he might be able to pull his legs up to his chin and slide his tied arms past them, so that they would be in front of his body. IF he could do that, and IF he could reach his knife and IF he could maneuver it in a way that cut the ropes rather than killing him, he might be able to drag himself out.

            It was a lot of ifs, but it was all he had left.

            Patrick took a deep breath and started kicking. His head was sinking faster, but he pulled his legs up, and managed to get his hands most of the way forward before the crook of his elbow caught on his sneaker. Patrick took one last breath before he wiggled and used the edge of his arm to force his one remaining shoe off, sinking down into the mud past nose level.

            Now he had his hands in front, but he was running out of air. Patrick got a hold of his knife and had the fleeting thought that bleeding out might be a little better than drowning in mud, if he couldn’t get through the ropes but could find a major vein. With that morbid thought in mind, he started sawing.

            It was slow going, which was unfortunate given how little air there was left in his lungs. He tried to wriggle his way up, to get one more breath of air, but it had the opposite effect, sinking him ever deeper into the mud. Patrick was able to close his eyes before he felt the cold sludge run over the tops of them. It was everywhere, thick and wet and deafening his ears and leaving him sightless.

            Frustrated, panicked, his lungs burning, Patrick yanked his hands hard in opposite directions. The rope must have frayed from sawing at it with his knife, because to his shock, his hands pulled apart.

            Holding the knife in his left hand, Patrick stuck his right hand above the surface of the mud and pulled it down again. A little like swimming, though he didn’t know if it would work or not. He was surrounded and in pain and he couldn’t fucking breathe, but he moved his other arm forward, not letting go of the knife. And again, one arm at a time, until he tried to move his right arm back into the mud and it struck something hard.

            Patrick pulled with all his might, and his head broke through the surface of the mud. He still couldn’t see, but he moved by sense of touch. He threw his knife ahead of him and grabbed the solid ground with his left hand and pulled harder. With a loud squelch, his shoulders were freed from the mud as well. And everything hurt, his broken bone and rope-burnt wrists and the fucking stab wound in his leg, and Patrick let out a scream, no longer a cry for help, but a long animalistic sound of pain and despair.

            He yanked, dragging himself out via the slippery ground inch by agonizing inch. He growled, feeling mud dripping into his mouth, gritty against his teeth, but he pulled nonetheless. His hand caught on a root, and he grabbed it and dragged himself the rest of the way out, the mud pit letting go of his feet with one last squelching noise.

            Patrick lay on the soaking ground, the rain drizzling down on his face and open chest, not heavy enough to wash away the mud and not light enough to be pleasant, and Patrick took in deep, glorious breaths of the cold night air.

            “Fucking infallible,” he said to himself, and then laughed without humor. Because it really, really wasn’t funny.

            Maybe that was all that heroism was, in the end. Maybe there were no dragon-slaying princes in mail that gleamed in the sunlight. Maybe there were no noble heroes, no Aragorns and no Luke Skywalkers. Maybe there was only this - heroes who were bloody and dirty and screaming and desperate, heroes who lost almost everything but managed to salvage something. He was alive. No lightsaber, no fangs, bleeding from multiple wounds, ankle broken and vocal chords torn, but god dammit, he was alive.

            Patrick lay there for a few minutes. He wasn’t even thinking about getting up until he heard the snap of a tree brush very near his ear, and he sat bolt upright, brandishing his knife.

            “Don’t get any fucking closer,” Patrick said. He felt like an animal caught in a bear trap, wounded and cornered and all the more dangerous for it. His throat rasped, but he could still get the words out. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

            “Whoa, holy shit, dude,” a voice said. Not a voice Patrick recognized, which is to say, not the voice of him or one of his band members.  Patrick lowered his knife. Not all the way, but less openly aggressive in his stance. He could still kill, if it came to that.

            “Come where I can see you, and not any fucking closer,” Patrick said. To his chagrin, he sounded exactly like he had been crying. The figure in the forest stepped forward, hands held aloft. Upon seeing him, Patrick let the knife hang loose at his side.

            The figure was a teenage boy, sixteen or so, with big eyes and a Pete Wentz-ish fringe of brown hair that was plastered to his forehead from the rain. Everything about him, from his skinny jeans to his round face spoke of youth. Patrick stared at him, unsure of what to do next.

            “Oh my God,” the kid said, looking at Patrick in the faint light of the forest. “Are you Patrick Stump?”

            “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Patrick said, his confused calm mood evaporating. He felt suddenly very hyper-aware of the fact that his shirt had been ripped clean down the middle, and he was all but shirtless in front of a _fan_. Barefoot and bloody, soaked head to toe in mud, and covered in scars. He didn’t really want to know how it looked. He crossed his arms over his chest and took a step back.

            “I’m sorry,” the kid said. “Um, what I meant was… are you okay?”

            “Not especially,” Patrick said. The kid stepped forward and Patrick scooted immediately backwards, nearly back into the mud pit.

            “Careful,” the kid said, holding up his hands. “There’s this, like quicksand thing right behind you.”

            “I noticed,” Patrick said, gesturing down at himself. He moved away from the pit to lean against a tree.

            “Right,” the kid said, one hand on the back of his head. “Course. Um, I see you got out, so that’s, uh, good. My drouk told me someone got stuck, and I came to see if… well I didn’t want anyone getting hurt.”

            “Your what?” Patrick asked.

            “Drouk,” the kid said. “You must have seen him. Really tall and pale and-”

            “Oh, fucking hell, that thing is yours?”

            “Yeah, sorry if he scared you,” the kid said. “But he can’t help how he looks.”

            Even leaning against the tree and hyped up on adrenaline, the pain in Patrick’s leg was really getting to him, and he was still losing blood rapidly. He slid down the side of the tree with a moan, reaching out to brace himself and keep upright. But with one hand on the bark and the other holding his knife, there was nothing to press down on the wound on his leg. He was feeling faint.

            “Oh, god, you’re hurt,” the kid said. “Um, Mr. Stump? Do you want to come back to my house? My parents can help you.”

            “Your house?” Patrick said. “We’re in the middle of the fucking woods!”

            “So is my house. It’s real close to here.”

            Patrick slid a little further down the tree.

            “Why do you live in the woods?”

            “We’re fae,” the kid said. At the look on Patrick’s face, he held out his hands again and shook his head. “No, not the bad kind! We’re not part of Unseelie Court or something. We’re on our own out here. I can’t lie,” he said, and he looked earnest.

            The kid took another step forward and a whine escaped Patrick’s throat against his will. He was right on the edge of tears, but he really didn’t want to be bloody and shirtless _and_ crying in front of a fan. The kid looked pitying regardless.

            “Hey, man,” he said. “You look like you’ve had a really rough day.”

            Patrick snorted.

            “Right, sorry about the mud thing. We just… Mom and Dad don’t really like intruders. But you can come with me, if you want. You’re bleeding a lot. I’m Jordan, by the way,” he stuck out his hand, even though Patrick was soaked in both mud and blood. “Jordan Witzigreuter. I’m a big fan of Fall Out Boy.”

            “I figured,” Patrick said. “I need-” a hospital “my band.”

            “Are they out here too?” Jordan asked. He must really like Fall Out Boy, Patrick thought, to have stood in the rain this long to try and coax a murderous and injured Patrick Stump back home with him. Patrick nodded.

            “We’ll try and expand the aura on the house,” Jordan said. “Make it easier to see. But- please. You’re hurt. Do you want to come home?”

            No, Patrick didn’t, he didn’t want to go home with this strange kid to a fae house in the middle of the woods, to where the monster lived. He was wet and cold and he hurt everywhere, inside and out. He wanted Pete, he wanted home, wanted his dogs and a drug that would cause serious memory loss. More than anything, he wanted his fucking music back. His lower lip was trembling, but he wasn’t going to cry again.

            “You’ll have to help me,” Patrick said. “My ankle is broken.”

            Jordan looked at him and frowned, but slung Patrick’s arm over his shoulder gamely and started to lead him away. Walking was agonizing, but Jordan was strong, and helped a great deal.

            “By the way, Jordan,” Patrick said. “Saying you’re a fan doesn’t really make me feel better right now.”

            “Sorry,” Jordan grunted, still heaving Patrick along. “Fat” burnt faintly across his stomach.

            Eventually, Patrick saw the soft lights of windows in the distance, as well as a porch light illuminating the front of a house. It looked like a simple hunting cabin made of logs and pitch, except for the fact that it had two stories with an attached garage, and a small front yard with vibrant green grass.

            “It’s gonna be okay,” Jordan said. He held still as Patrick flinched, not asking why. Then he walked up to the door and flung it open but didn’t step inside yet.

            “Mom, Dad?” he called. A man who looked much like an older version of Jordan - though not much older - stood just on the other side of the doorway, frowning at the two of them.

            “Jordan!” he said. “You boys are filthy; you can’t come in here like this!”

            “Wait, but Dad, this is-”

            “I can take care of it, don’t trouble yourself.”

            “No, but Dad, we-”

            Before Patrick could really comprehend what was happening, cold water gushed over him, like a bucket had been dumped over his head. He stood there, trembling in the cold, and Jordan’s father looked him over.

            “Dad,” an equally soaked Jordan said. “This is Patrick Stump. From _Fall Out Boy_?”

            “Oh!” the man said. “ _Pete’s_ Patrick, do you mean?”

            Patrick wished he had just let himself die in the mud.

            “Dad, he’s hurt!” Jordan cried. A woman burst into the room and looked appalled.

            “Oh, goodness, can’t you see his aura, idiot? He’s hurt!”

            The woman took Patrick’s hand and tried to usher him in, but he couldn’t move fast enough, and he let out a pained noise in response.

            She and Jordan helped him inside. By the time he was seated, with a few towels between him and the couch beneath him, his ankle was swollen and throbbing. The Witzigreuters seemed at a loss for how to help him. Eventually, Mrs. Witzigreuter gave him an enormous pill that she promised would help with the pain, along with a glass of water that didn’t quite wash the taste of blood and dirt out of Patrick’s mouth.

            “There’s a bath on this level,” she said. “Lucky for us. Patrick, I’m so sorry, I think we’ve had a hand in your terrible night, but you’re welcome to stay here as long as you want, and I promise, we’ll do all we can to find your friends as well.”

            The house was wonderful. A large fire burnt merrily in the fireplace, illuminating the whole exposed wooden room. There were thick rugs on the floor, and hand-woven blankets on all the furniture. The whole place felt rustic and lived in, though still quite clean. It was warm and dry and welcoming, and the Witzigreuters were even more so, and Patrick didn’t trust any of it.

            “As a trap for Pete?” he asked. His voice was shot, and he was probably damning himself. Not that it mattered.

            “No,” she said, taken aback. “No, sweetie, why would we do that?”

            “Jordan says you’re fae,” Patrick said. “We got led here by fae. The courts are always after Pete. The wave that nearly killed us and the mud and the dro- the dru- the whatever, you’ll keep me alive until you get Pete and-”

            “Sweetheart,” she said. She looked suddenly, unbearably sad. “Er- Patrick.” She held up one hand. “I vow that we will do you no harm, nor any of your friends. And I promise that we haven’t done any intentional harm. We will not abuse your trust here. But you need to let us help, until we can get you to medical professionals. I can tape up your leg and get you a hot bath for now. Will that be all right?”

            Against all logic, Patrick nodded.

            She smiled, but didn’t touch him, which he was grateful for. He’d had enough hands on him for the rest of his life.

            “You’ll be safe here,” she said, and she walked over into the next room, probably preparing a bath, from the sound of running water.

            Patrick reasoned that, since she was fae, she must really believe that.

***

            As soon as they heard the egrigors, Joe knew he was fucked. They were all fucked. He heard them as he was approaching the clearing, laughing and taunting-

            Patrick. Of course. And even once they were there with him, there wasn’t much Joe could do through the whole exchange but stand there in silence and not betray the turmoil of emotions throughout the whole thing. Betrayal. Disgust. Embarrassment. And, of course, undiluted horror.

            All the raised white lines of the burns all over Patrick’s body, the words Joe had tried not to read, some of which were his. A lot of them were probably his.

            Because how the hell was he supposed to control what he thought?! How the fuck was he supposed to respond to any of that? He couldn’t stop himself from thinking mean, spiteful things from time to time, but after seeing that... After seeing all of that, the image of Patrick staring at the ground, the words all but glowing on his chest, the scarred “WEAK” was going to be burned into the back of Joe’s eyes, an ever-present reminder of what he’d unknowingly done every time he closed his eyes.

            The whole time they were standing there motionless was torture, so in spite of the pain and guilt that was eating away at Joe through the pack bond, he kept an eye open for his opportunity.

            Then, finally, he had one.

            After the egrigors smashed the USB (and as long as Joe wasn’t thinking about it, it was like it didn’t happen, he didn’t have to think about it). Not Patrick took hold of Patrick, holding him loosely in his arms. But he was holding him, which meant that his hands were occupied. So long as he was busy holding Patrick, the others would be easy to take down. Joe tensed, pulling back as if preparing to spring, but Pete whispered harshly over to him.

            “No! You’ll get him killed!”

            Joe didn’t take the extra second to point out that the egrigors still couldn’t kill Patrick, so he didn’t quite see the point of holding still.

            “So, we’ll be off now,” Not Pete said, his voice mild and pleasant.

            “I don’t think so,” Joe said, his voice just as friendly. “You’ve had your fun. Give him back.”

            It was a little hard for them to hear one another, between the heavy beat of the rain and the consistent stream of swears coming from Patrick.

            “How bout you come catch us?” Not Joe said.

            “And hey, Pete, at least you get a warning this time,” Not Patrick said. “You can say goodbye to your boyfriend!”

            Joe lurched forward a split second before Not Patrick started moving. He stretched out his hand and managed to grab onto the egrigor’s shirt, but it didn’t slow him like it would have anyone else. Instead, it just left Joe with a handful of starch-white fabric.

            He took a second to glance back at Andy and Pete. The way Joe saw it, they could either stick together, with Pete slowing their pursuit, or they could split up, maybe speeding things along, but possibly losing each other. He deliberated for only a second, then tore off into the forest. He didn’t dare transform, not wanting to lose his clothes and all his shit in the forest.

            Not Patrick was easy to see in front of Joe; his white gold hair was almost blinding in the darkness of the forest. But he was getting further away with every second, the distance between them growing. Running was horrible. Joe was fast, he was inhumanly fast and not holding anything back, but this thing was indisputably faster.

            “PATRICK!” he shouted. He was losing sight of them through all the rain. “Pa-”

            Joe tripped over a root, and he was going so fast that the slip sent him flying before he fell and skidded face first in the mud. When he looked up again, he couldn’t see anything but the monotony of the rainy woods.

            “FUCK!” he shouted. He dragged himself to his feet, and was going to continue running forward, but his legs were suddenly aching, his knee throbbing and refusing to support him. Joe caught hold of a tree and took a minute to breathe deeply.

            Eventually, he heard the sounds of two people approaching behind him. Andy had stayed with Pete, it seemed, and the two of them ran up to him at a regular human’s pace.

            “What are you doing?” Pete asked. “Joe, why did you stop?”

            “I lost them,” Joe said, his voice hollow. His hair was stuck to his face, and every time he opened his mouth he inhaled a little bit of water, it was raining so hard. He tried to roll his weight onto his injured leg and saw red before leaning back against the tree.

            “You lost them?!” Pete shouted. “How did you lose them?!”

            “He’s faster than me!” Joe shouted back. He didn’t say that it was Patrick’s fault that the thing was faster than Joe, even though it was. Stupid fucking human complex, if he didn’t want to be super so badly, they might have had a chance against these things. “He was already far ahead of me when I tripped and-”

            He gripped his knee, willing it to stop hurting him so they could start moving again.

            “He can’t be that fast!” Pete said. “He was carrying Patrick, for fuck’s sake!”

            “Well, next time, why don’t you catch him?! If it’s so goddamn easy!” Joe said.

            “Stop it,” Andy said. “Look, we can still follow the trail for now, but the rain is gonna wash the scent away fast.”

            Joe limped doggedly after Andy, and not one of them addressed the elephant in the forest. The words on Patrick’s skin. What words were Joe’s and the which ones were from Andy and Pete. Horrible things that Pete had thought about Patrick were burned into his skin. That was, Joe thought, more than a little fucked up, to put it mildly.

            They were still tracing the vague scent of- well, Joe wasn’t sure _what_ Andy was following, but he could smell the trail of blood Patrick left behind, when they came across a sneaker stuck in the mud, some patches of pristine white still visible on it. They didn’t stop to pick it up, but Joe almost thought they should, like some fucked up Cinderella story. Find the boy, give him his shoe back, help him escape from the clutches of the torture demons.

            They weren’t far past the shoe when they heard Patrick scream, not from ahead, but behind the three of them. Joe stopped and spun around, because it _sounded_ like Patrick, but-

            “We should keep following the trail,” he said.

            “That was Patrick!” Pete shouted.

            “I know it was his voice, but we don’t know if that was him,” Joe said. “Pete, think about it, we know the blood is his, but the voice could be… somebody else.” Joe looked at Andy, partly asking for backup, partly as apology for the last time, when he had argued the opposite.

            “We’re never going to catch up to them!” Pete said. “We can try and cut them off, but we can’t run fast enough to follow them!”

            “It’s a safer bet,” Andy said. Pete was livid.

            “We can’t do this, not again,” he said.

            “Then stick with us,” Andy said. Joe continued running in the direction they had been, but only for a minute before they heard Patrick scream again, earsplitting and agonized. Joe could feel Pete aching through the bond, but more concerningly, he felt Patrick in pain too. He turned to Andy, distressed.

            “I can feel him, and I don’t-” he didn’t know what to do, but saying that out loud seemed like a bad idea.

            “Why don’t you two keep following your fucking trail,” Pete said. “And I’ll go find him.”

            “That’s a bad idea,” Andy said. “We shouldn’t split up-”

            “Yeah, because sticking together has really fucking helped us this far!” Pete screamed. He looked downright dangerous with his hands balled into fists at his side.

            “Fine,” Joe said. They were wasting time, the trail was going cold, and everything was going to fall apart all over again and Patrick would be borderline catatonic when they found him again and everyone would be back to square one and Joe wasn’t equipped to handle any of it. “Fine, so you and Andy go investigate the screaming and I’ll keep following the trail, and maybe if we’re lucky we’ll meet up where Patrick is.”

            “No, I’m better at smelling the blood,” Andy said. “You should go with Pete.”

            But Joe didn’t want to go with Pete, didn’t want to get stuck with him while he was being… like this.

            “This is fresh blood, Andy, I’ll be fine,” Joe said, trying to hold back his anger because he wasn’t really angry at his band, except he was. He was furious at all of them, for being too slow and too soft and thinking such horrible things. Although not nearly as horrible as the things that Joe was thinking about them right then.

            Somewhere much closer to them, Patrick screamed “PETE!” like he was dying.

            “I’ll go by myself!” Pete yelled. Joe grabbed his arm, holding him still before he could walk away.

            “You can’t,” Joe said.

            “Why do I need a fucking babysitter?” Pete screamed.

            “Because you’re just as weak as your boyfriend!” Joe screamed back. All three of them froze.

            Because thinking it was one thing, but saying it was something else entirely.

            Andy was looking between the two of them, his face frozen. Pete’s expression no longer looked tortured. He went blank, which made it much more of a surprise when he slammed his fist into Joe’s nose with a wet crunch.

            Joe staggered backwards, hand to his face. The smell of blood in the forest got infinitely stronger, though Joe realized almost at once that it was because his nose was gushing blood. He looked up in time to see Pete still staring at him for half a second, before turning and running off in the direction they had last heard the scream.

            “Pete!” Joe yelled. He started after him, but Andy put a hand on his chest.

            “Let me,” he pleaded. “Just- just let me right now, okay?”

            “Should I follow after Patrick?” Joe asked. He felt nauseous in a way that had very little to do with the blood draining down the back of his throat.

            “Might as well,” Andy said, and he left to run after Pete. Joe swiped his hand across his nose and flicked the blood away. Then he kept following the trail of Patrick’s blood, though it was getting harder and harder, like the bleeding was slowing down. Joe’s nose, on the other hand, was pouring blood like a goddamn fountain, and it throbbed like it was broken. He knew Pete had been a kind of violent guy in the past, the kind of dude who got into fights, and he knew he had broken people’s noses before, but he’d never fought with Joe. Not the kind of fight where you intentionally caused real physical damage. Pete and Patrick had fought like that before, but he was pretty sure Pete had never left Joe with more than a bad bruise. At least not on purpose.

            What was worse was that Joe felt like he deserved it.

            He was running down the path still, but it was hard to keep his speed up. His knee throbbed and his nose was hurting him too, and it was dark and he just wanted to go home. No adventure, he thought, was worth this.

            Then, from his side, he heard Pete scream.

            “JOE! HELP!”

            Joe spun around, started running away from the path, and then stopped himself. Not real, he thought. It was just the egrigors. But then, he felt through the bond, and Pete _was_ distressed. That could just be the distress of Patrick being missing, but Joe couldn’t tell which it was.

            He had to keep following the trail, he thought, but he realized then that he had lost it at some point. The smell of his own blood was overpowering the blood on the ground, and he had no idea where he was going.

            It occurred to Joe that he was, in fact, lost.

            “JOE!”

            Joe spun around, because that was _Andy_ , surely Andy was too strong to be taken by these things.

            “JOE, HELP ME!”

            Joe couldn’t be sure it wasn’t Andy. He started to run, his leg screaming in protest as he ran. What if, he thought, this was what the meant when they said he was next? What if they intended to punish him by incapacitating his whole pack, one at a time?

            “ANDY!” Joe shouted, and the forest echoed his voice back at him.

            “JOE!” Patrick screamed, his voice wet and used. “JOE, PLEASE!” And then he screamed, wordless, but not a scream of fear. It wasn’t the sort of scream you used to get attention, but a scream of pure pain. He was being tortured, begging, screaming at the top of his lungs, and Joe couldn’t do anything.

            “Please! Please! Please!” The words bounced off the trees and sounded in Joe’s ears again and again.

            “JOE!”

            “JOE!”

            “JOE!”

            There were voices were all around him, and Joe knew, he KNEW it wasn’t his band, it was just the egrigors, but he couldn’t take the sound of it. He clapped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes, but he could still hear them, all around him and inside his head.

            “JOE!”

            “HELP US!”

            "PLEASE!"

            “I’m sorry,” Joe whispered.

            He still stumbled forward, eyes closed, and soon enough he fell again. He thought he would just fall onto his ass, but he started sliding instead. Joe opened his eyes to see the trees flying by him as he skidded down the side of a ravine on a sled of dead leaves and mud.

            When he finally came to a stop, he landed poorly: back first into a small creek running through the middle of the ravine. The water was icy cold, and did nothing to help the throbbing of his injuries. The water ran over him, and Joe just lay there. The water was rushing noisily past him, drowning out the sounds of screaming. That was maybe the best outcome he could hope for. Joe closed his eyes and his shoulders started to shake.

            Once again, he had failed in every way possible. He had lost Patrick to the egrigors (again), the rest of his band had disappeared, he’d lost the trail, he’d said something awful to Pete, and now he was reaping the benefits by lying there, injured and out of ideas, while his band went through unimaginable horrors.

            Joe might have just lain there forever, waiting for death, when he felt a gentle pressure on his knee. Then a not so gentle pressure, and then he realized someone was stepping down on him. Joe screamed as he sat up, the other Joe pinning him down with the toe of his boot.

            “Are you just gonna lay there and feel sorry for yourself?” Not Joe asked. Joe tried to squirm away, but Not Joe jammed his foot in harder, eliciting another scream.

            “It isn’t your time yet,” he said. “Not today. But still-”

            There was a glint of silver, and then an excruciating pain in his knee as something sharp was burrowed under his kneecap. Joe screamed again, lurching forward with his eyes already streaming. Then, though the sharpness remained, the pressure on his kneecap was gone.

            Joe glanced around, but Not Joe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at his bleeding knee and couldn’t see a handle poking out. Stomach low, he felt around the entry point of the wound and realized that whatever had been stuck inside him was still buried deep in his flesh.

            Joe wanted to scream, though if the others were going through anything like he was, the forest would already be full of the sound of his screams. This hurt, burning and cutting like a hot razor. No way could Joe walk like this, to say nothing of running, but he didn’t exactly know how to get it out either.

            He thought of the time the egrigors were chasing after him and Patrick, Patrick offering to try and dig the bullet out for Joe. Joe wished Patrick was there now, not even for Patrick’s sake anymore. He just didn’t want to be alone.

            Joe ripped the knee of his jeans open and cupped some stream water in his hands, splashing it on the wound to wash away the blood. The entry wound was small, but Joe could see a hint of silver glinting at the edge of it.

            “JOE!”

            Joe curled in on himself. It was Andy screaming, terrified, and it wasn’t real.

            “JOE HELP!”

            Not real, not real, he thought as he tried to pinch the metal in his stiff freezing fingers. None of it was real.

            “JOE!”

            Andy crashed, hands and knees first, into the water next to him. His eyes were huge, glasses gone, and he was covered in blood and some slimy substance.

            “Fucking run,” Andy said. “Monsters, there are-”

            “I can’t run,” Joe said. “The egrigors aren’t- but they just left-!”

            “NOT THE FUCKING EGRIGORS!” Andy said. He looked over his shoulder again, made a distressed noise, and lifted Joe up bridal style before running off into the forest again.

            “What are you doing?” Joe shouted. The movement was jostling the silver thing in his knee, and the pain was so intense that his vision was blurring.

            “Look behind us!”

            Joe craned his neck to see over Andy’s shoulder, and then saw the same white monster he caught sight of earlier that night. Hulking and dripping and running towards them.

            Joe screamed. Then, deciding he could be embarrassed about it later, buried his face in Andy’s shirt. Let someone else deal with it. Let someone else save the day.

            His resolve to let someone else be in charge held for a good minute before he looked up, adjusting his position in Andy’s arms. He pulled his pistol out of his pocket - and of course, how could he forget? His dumb-ass insisted on using an antique gun, so old that it ceased functioning when it got wet.

            “Stop,” Joe said.

            “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” Andy asked, continuing to run at the same pace.

            “Stop!” Joe shouted. “I want to talk to it!”

            Andy slowed, but muttered “You’d better have a backup plan” under his breath.

            Joe extricated himself from Andy’s arms and slowly lowered to his feet. His knee seemed to explode with the pain of it, but he stood upright nevertheless. The white mass didn’t stop walking towards them, but it did slow, cocking its head. The black glitter of its eyes reminded Joe of the other monster prowling the woods, and did nothing to calm his nerves.

            “What do you want?” Joe called. The creature slowed more, staring at Joe with beady eyes.

            “Why are you following us?” Joe tried again. “What do you want from us?”

            The thing stopped fully. It pointed to itself, and then to Joe, revealing incredibly sharp pointed nails. It let out a gurgling, thick sound that didn’t quite translate as a word to Joe.

            “Sorry?” Joe said.

            “Maybe we should just go back to running?” Andy suggested in a low voice.

            “PETE,” the thing said. “GETTING PETE.”

            Joe swallowed thickly.

            “What is it that we’re getting Pete for, buddy?” Joe asked.

            “COURT,” it said. “ONE OF US.”

            “Not really,” Joe said. He took a step backward, a stick snapping loudly under his good foot.

            “PETE-FRIEND,” it said, pointing at Joe.

            “Yeah, okay, you were right,” Joe said to Andy. “Any chance you can pick me up again?”

            Andy swept Joe off his feet and took off again. Joe could hear the heavy squelching of mud behind them, but he didn’t turn to see how close it was.

            “So,” Joe was panting, even though he wasn’t the one running. “What is that thing?”

            Andy grunted something that Joe couldn’t quite hear.

            “What?”

            “I said,” Andy said, voice labored with exertion. “You should be asking ‘What _are_ those _things_?’”

            Joe twisted to look around, but he could only see the one, thankfully farther away than he was fearing.

            “Pete?” he asked, fear twisting his stomach painfully.

            “I don’t know,” Andy said.

            Eventually, the inevitable happened and Andy stumbled, and as Joe tumbled out of his arms, he caught sight of Patrick’s shoe stuck in the mud, Again. Joe felt a little hysterical.

            “We’re going in circles,” he said.

            “Calm down,” Andy pleaded, but Joe was screaming already.

            “WE’RE GOING IN CIRCLES! WE’RE NEVER GETTING OUT OF THIS FUCKING DEATH TRAP FOREST!”

            “Shut up!” Andy yelled. Joe turned with every intent to scream at Andy some more, but as he fell quiet, he could hear Pete screaming in the distance. Joe shook his head and covered his ears, fully aware of how childish he much look. He didn’t care, he didn’t want to hear this anymore, but Andy pulled his hands away and held them down at Joe’s sides.

            “JOE!” the voice was far away, but insistent. “HELP ME!”

            “It’s not real, it’s not real,” Joe said. “It’s the fucking demons, they’ve been following me it’s not him it’s-”

            Pete’s cries were joined in with the sound of someone who could only be Not Patrick, loud and taunting.

            “Aw, Pete, do you miss your boyfriend? I can keep you warm while he’s gone-”

            “JOE I CAN HEAR YOU OUT THERE YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE COME OVER AND HELP ME-”

            “That’s _definitely_ our Pete,” Andy said.

            Andy and Joe crashed through the forest, not far before they found Not Patrick, pacing the base of a tree and snarling. His white-blonde hair hung dripping into his eyes. As angry as he sounded, however, he just looked amused.

            “If you’re so scared to come down, I could come up with you,” he called. Joe followed the monster’s gaze up into the tree, which had wooden planks nailed into the trunk like a makeshift ladder. Nearly twenty feet up, perched on a small wooden ledge, barely big enough to sit on, was Pete, bleeding from a cut on his head and looking terrified.

            The egrigor had his back turned to them. Joe knew the egrigors were in their heads, but he wondered if maybe, just maybe, they weren’t totally connected. He put his hand on the hilt of Andy’s sword and raised an eyebrow at him. Andy nodded. In one fluid motion, Joe pulled the sword from its scabbard and slashed through the air. Right before it touched Not Patrick’s neck, though, the sword clanged against another piece of metal. So fast that Joe hadn’t even seen it, Not Patrick had raised a clawlike knife up to block him. He turned slowly, smiling at Joe just a little too wide.

            “Today is just not your day, sweetheart,” he said. “Did you think I’d be that easy to kill?”

            “I- I was-” Joe didn’t have voice enough to retort. Not Patrick forced his knife down, ripping the sword out of Joe’s hands.

            “Oh, oh, you were, you were, what?” Not Patrick said. He pushed the tip of the knife up under Joe’s chin. “Maybe calling other people weak was a bit hypocritical, huh?”

            “When I do figure out how to kill your pack,” Not Patrick added. “Will you feel it when they die?”

            Before Joe had a chance to even try to answer, Not Patrick let out a horrible scream. He fell to his knees, dropped his knife, and started grabbing at his back, gurgling. Behind him, a very pale Pete was holding Andy’s sword.

            “C’mon, c’mon, let’s go!” Andy yelled, dragging both Joe and Pete behind him as he ran.

            “Where- where are we-?” Joe couldn’t get out a whole sentence as he stumbled after Andy. The silver in his knee hurt so badly he could barely see, and his mouth tasted like blood.

            “Patrick,” Andy said. “I can smell his blood, I’m sure of it.”

            “How do you-?”

            “WILL YOU JUST TRUST ME?!” Andy screamed. Joe didn’t argue. If he absolutely had to run, he’d prefer they did it in silence.

            Andy stopped them at the edge of the trees. Joe saw light ahead, and as his vision swam, he had the brief and unbearable hope that they were at the side of the highway again, that Patrick had gotten out of the forest and they were all leaving.

            But his eyesight cleared, and the vision came into focus. The space in front of them was an open patch of grass, and the lights came from the windows of a cottage, far removed from the roads that had led them in. Joe could have screamed. It was just a cottage, warm with light and the scent of life, with some sort of pen and barn off to the side, a muddy field with a wooden lean-to in the corner. The house itself was shuttered up, and looked innocuous enough, but Joe knew better than to trust something like that.

            “That’s where Patrick is?” he guessed.

            “Pretty sure,” Andy said. Joe leaned his weight on his good leg, and took in a deep breath.

            “Okay,” Joe said. “Could be anything in there. Are we all ready?”

            Pete made a noise that could have been assent, and Andy nodded once. Never minding that Joe was in no condition to fight, and his weapon was still rendered useless by the water, he nodded as well.

            “Let’s go,” he said. He led the way up to the door, ignoring the stabs of pain shooting up his leg as well as he could. They walked all the way up to the front door, and then Joe shouldered it in, ripping the door frame to splinters.

            “Holy shit!” someone shouted. Joe scanned the room, assessing for danger, and he found… nothing. A fire crackling in a huge fireplace, a teenage boy sitting on the couch with his laptop open, a fairly normal looking man in bifocals reading a book in the chair next to him. Both of them staring up at Joe like he had three heads.

            “Oh,” Joe said. “Um. Have you seen my friend, Patrick?”

            “You’re Fall Out Boy!” the kid said, slamming the laptop shut. “Dad, that’s them!”

            “Fall Out Boy broke my door,” the man said, looking unimpressed. “First the mud and now the door…” he shook his head. “Your friend is upstairs, asleep, unless you’ve just woken him with all the racket. You three may as well come in, too. Don’t suppose the entryway can get much dirtier than it is.”

            Joe took small, measured steps forward, trying not to aggravate his injury any more than was necessary. Andy followed after him, but Pete stood just outside, his head still bleeding and the rainwater dripping off him a diluted shade of red.

            “What have you done with him?” Pete asked.

            “Given him some dry clothes and a place to stay while you three found your way here,” the man said. “Why, is he not your friend?”

            “You’re fae,” Pete said. “I know it.”

            “As are you, my friend,” the man said. “Come in so that we might meet as friends.”

            “No!” Pete shouted. “I know who you are, I know what you did! You’re working for the queen, trying to get to me through them, and it’s not going to work!”

            “I mean you no harm. You know I do not lie.”

            “That’s not good enough.”

            “I know what might be - I’m unaligned. We all are.”

            At this, Pete froze. He was still standing in the rain, which Joe, standing in the warm cabin, thought was pretty stupid.

            “What do you mean you’re unaligned?” Pete asked.

            “I mean we’re unaligned with a court,” the man said. “We are fae, yes, but we’re not seelie or unseelie. We have no alignment, and no ulterior motives for inviting you inside, other than curiosity.”

            Pete stepped inside, dripping mud and rain and blood all over the floor.

            “In any case,” the man said, looking pained at the ground. “Hospitality is one of the most important virtues in a faerie.”

            Joe heard a sound from the upstairs landing, and glanced up, catching sight of Patrick leaning over the railing. He looked better than he felt, Joe thought. Clad in someone’s Christmas pajamas with his arms folded over his chest, he looked closed off, but otherwise fine. Joe knew that wasn’t the case, but it was comforting to see.

            “Hey,” Joe said. Patrick lifted his hand a little.

            “Hey,” he croaked back. His throat sounded raw.

            Andy waved up at him. Pete was just staring up at Patrick. In the midst of their thick, awful silence, a maternal looking woman stepped out of a door behind Patrick.

            “Bread,” the man announced at last. “What we need is some bread, and maybe wine.”

            “Not compulsion wine,” Joe almost shouted. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he was still very raw and panicked and in pain. The man just shook his head, smiling almost indulgently at Joe.

            “No, not compulsion wine,” he said. “Not all fae secrets are dark. We also make a wildflower wine that warms you from your core like summer sunshine. And given that you are in a house, not a subset of the court, it won’t trap you anywhere. On my word.”

            Joe looked at Pete for help, and Pete shrugged. Pain thrummed through Joe’s leg, and the woman rushed past Patrick down the stairs. She put a hand on Joe’s shoulder, and though his automatic reflex was to pull away, some of the pain eased when she touched him, the relief so sudden and palpable that he moaned.

            “What happened to your leg?” she asked.

            “Silver,” Joe said. “I’m- I’m a werewolf, see, and they stuck a shard of silver under my knee.”

            The woman looked horrified but nodded calmly. The same could not be said of Joe’s band, but he had eyes only for her as she sat him down on the couch.

            “Let me get a first aid kit,” she said. “We’ll pull that out, and if it hasn’t been in too long, it should start healing on its own.”

            Joe nodded gratefully and leaned back against the sofa. He listened as people started moving around the house. The man walked into the kitchen and started rummaging in the fridge, Patrick limped down the stairs, and Andy put a slightly too heavy hand on his shoulder.

            “You didn’t tell me-”

            “It wouldn’t have changed anything,” Joe said.

            The woman knelt down in front of Joe and lifted Joe’s pants leg up above his knee. He didn’t go out of his way to look at his knee, but he could see something swollen and reddish purple out of the corner of his eye. He felt ill just glancing at it.

            “I trust you know this will hurt,” she warned, and Joe nodded. He fixed his eyes across the room where Pete and Patrick had sat down together by the fire. The two of them had yet to speak to each other, but they were staring at one another, way too intense. Pete had a hand on Patrick’s lower thigh, and they seemed to be having a conversation without talking.

            Then there were tweezers digging into his leg, pain flaring up from the wound all through his body. He hissed, vision flashing as she dug, but then the pain flared again, and finally receded. His sight cleared in time to see her drop a silver shard on the coffee table, slick with blood.

            “There,” she sighed. “Must be a little better. I wish I could do more for your friend, but…”

            “What happened?” Joe asked, half to the woman and half to Patrick.

            “Broken ankle,” Patrick said. Then he paused. “Again.”

            It took a second for it to sink in. Then, Joe snorted. After a moment, the four of them were laughing. It wasn’t happy laughter, but it wasn’t quite hysterical either. Just enough to thaw out some of the tension between all of them. The family living in this cottage was staring at them like they had lost it, but Patrick was bent double with giggles.

            “Is it the same ankle?” Andy asked. Patrick nodded.

            “Broken by a different douchebag, but in the same way,” he said. “And I got stabbed. And then I was drowning in mud. I’m having a terrible, terrible day.”

            “You and me both, man,” Joe said.

            “You guys are Fall Out Boy,” the kid said reverently. “Like, you guys are really, actually Fall Out Boy.”

            “This is Jordan,” Patrick said, gesturing to the kid. “Jordan Witzigreuter, and his parents. Jordan writes music too. It’s pretty good.”  
            “Really?” Joe said. He could see the glimmer in Pete’s eyes, like he was already planning on adopting the kid like he did with Panic. “Hell of a compliment coming from Patrick, he doesn’t usually say that about me. Did you rescue him?”

            “Think I rescued myself,” Patrick said dryly.

            The kid, Jordan, was already blushing a deep shade of pink, but he shook his head.

            “Not really,” he said. He had one hand on the back of his neck, embarrassed and modest. “Um, Patrick had already saved himself when I showed up. I just brought him back to the house.”

            “Lucky you found him,” Pete said. “It’s awful out there.”

            “It wasn’t luck,” Jordan said. “It was my drouk, he told me.”

            “Your what?” Pete asked.

            “My drouk,” Jordan said, as though it were obvious. “Well, I say mine. They’re not pets, really, but he’s fond of me, and they sort of work on the property, so…”

            “What’s a drouk?” Joe asked.

            “Another type of fae,” Mr. Witzigreuter said from the kitchen.  He came back out to them holding a tray laden with bread and cheese, and an ornate decanter filled with a pale purple liquid. “They left Unseelie Court at the same time my wife and I left Seelie Court.”

            “Left?” Pete said. “What do you mean by that, anyway? How could you leave?”

            “What does a drouk look like?” Andy asked warily, but he was so quiet that the Witzigreuters didn’t seem to hear him.

            “Pete.” Mrs. Witzigreuter was sitting on one of the plush chairs, her face anxious. “We’ve heard a great deal about you, through the grapevine, as it were. We’ve wanted to meet you for a very long time, because to the best of our knowledge, we are some of the only fae in the world living outside of the jurisdiction of the courts.”

            “Seelie Court,” Mr. Witzigreuter said, “Is not quite as bad as it seems from the outside, but the laws are a little… draconian, actually. My partner and I wanted a child, and in this modern age, we didn’t want to raise someone in the court.

            “Luckily for us, we were just influential enough to be granted access, but not to be so necessary that we were forced to stay. We were allowed to leave because of our position, and we are always grateful. The courts aren’t evil, they’re just very strict, and they like to… they like to play their hand close to their chest. Which is, in part, why my wife and I so fully support your decision to stay away from them.”

            “I don’t quite follow,” Pete said.

            “You’re new,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said. “You’re new and powerful, and an unknown quantity is usually more valuable than a known one. Many fae are allowed to exist on the fringes of the court. You would not be. Just as Jordan would not be.”

            Joe looked over at the kid, who looked embarrassed again.

            “I’m not as special as you, man,” he said quickly.

            “What are you?” Pete asked.

            “I’m just… kind of talented with rivers,” Jordan said. “Part of why the drouks stay with us, I think. We’re all naiads, so, you know, water spirits band together and all that.”

            “Jordan developed powers young,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said.

            The door had been propped back up against its frame, but Joe could still hear the wind howling and the rain battering down just outside, outrageously loud. Joe really wished he hadn’t broken down the door. The little cottage felt terribly vulnerable, and Joe knew that while there were seven of them inside, there were many monsters lurking just outside. The egrigors, at least, couldn’t touch these people, but the white things…

            “Seelie Court hoards power,” she said. “Most fae don’t develop a specialized power until they reach maturity at the century mark. Since Jordan’s begun developing powers already… well, if the court knew, that could be trouble. So we were scared he would be weaponized, and now, recently we’ve come to disapprove of the way they’ve been treating humans. But we wanted to meet you, Pete, for more reasons than just solidarity.”

            It thundered outside, the very walls of the house shivering with the boom. It was so loud that it was impossible to hear squelching footsteps in the mud, but Joe was sure he did.

            “We’ve heard so much about you, Pete,” Mr. Witzigreuter said. “The calamitous new fae, unaligned, refusing to be aligned, even. You’re so remarkable, but you’re in a great deal of danger, which is why we wanted to meet you so badly.”

            “What _do_ drouks look like?” Joe asked, echoing Andy’s earlier question.

            “And you thought that tearing up my studio was the best way to get my attention?” Pete asked, affronted.

            “Tear up your studio?!” he asked. “You came to us.”

            “No, we were led here,” Pete said. “The words ‘Fort Wayne’ were carved into the walls and drenched in compulsion wine.”

            “Sounds like a trap,” Jordan said.

            The sloshing, wet noises were nearly at the door, and Joe’s heart was hammering.

            “We should leave, in that case,” his mother said, standing up at once. She strode to the door so quickly that Joe didn’t have time to call out and warn her. She pulled the broken door aside, and standing out in the rain were three of the enormous, faceless white creatures.

            But to Joe’s surprise, she didn’t scream.

            “Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” she said. “We need to leave right away, get to the city.”

            The creatures did not step aside. Instead, one of them forced its way in, slamming a huge, three toed food on the ground.

            “Give - demon - child,” it gurgled, and it pointed one long, sharp finger at Pete.

            “Jordan,” Joe asked. “Is that a drouk, by any chance?”

            “Uh huh,” Jordan said. “But- we live with the drouks. They would never-”

            The drouk grabbed his mother by her neck and lifted her high in the air, then turned to face Pete with its tiny, fishy eyes.

            “Demonata,” it said.

            “I think,” Joe said faintly. “The drouks are not on the side you think they are.”

***

            Andy wanted to go home. He hated Indiana, he hated these woods and the rain and the egrigors and he wanted to go to bed and kiss his daughter on the head. Instead, there was a hoard of magical, seven-foot-tall slime-creatures called “drouks” that wanted to capture Pete and take him to Unseelie Court. They couldn’t even run from the drouks because outside, they were being stalked by their evil twins.

            Andy had little choice in what to do next. He launched himself over the sofa and hit the drouk holding the woman in the center of its chest, knocking it backwards. Andy pulled his hands away coated in a thick sort of slime, white and viscous where he had touched the creature. He seemed to have hit the thing hard enough that it dropped Mrs. Witzigreuter, but the others at the door were coming in.

            “Do you have a backdoor?” Andy yelled. He knocked one of the drouks back, but even as it stumbled, Andy could see that he wasn’t really hurting the creature. It was gelatinous, its shape giving where Andy hit it, but bouncing right back into shape afterwards. He glanced behind him, but the man was shaking his head.

            Andy turned to Joe, but Joe had frozen up, again. It wasn’t like him, Andy thought, but then again, no one was doing well that night. No one was really up for this, but someone had to be anyway. If Joe couldn’t do it, Andy supposed that it fell to him to take charge.

            So. If they couldn’t get outside to get away from the drouks, Andy wanted a door between them and the creatures. It wasn’t a great plan, but it was a start.

            “Someone grab Patrick and get upstairs,” Andy said. When no one moved, he added a hissed “Please!” He went to draw his sword but only found an empty hilt. Right. Goddamn egrigors. So instead he kicked the nearest drouk in the stomach (or, where the stomach area would be on a human, at any rate) and sent it colliding into the other creatures, knocking all of them back.

            Andy brought up the rear going up the stairs, looking over his shoulders every few seconds to check and see how close the drouks were. The first of them had just reached the stairs when everyone had made it inside a room. Andy threw himself into the room last, slamming the door behind him and leaning on it to keep it shut.

            “Right,” Andy said. “Right. Maybe you should explain drouks to us a little more.”

            They were in a bedroom lit by a single lamp, and the rain was much louder there than it was downstairs. Patrick and Joe were sitting on the bed, both of them looking especially pale.

            “They’re- they’re our friends,” Mr. Witzigreuter said. “We live with them. They left Unseelie Court a few years after we left Seelie Court, and they said they wanted to live like we did.”

            “Well,” the door banged at Andy’s back, nearly knocking him to his hands and knees. “I think either they’ve changed their minds, or they weren’t as friendly as they seemed.”

            “They couldn’t have lied to us,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said. “Fae don’t turn traitor, they can’t lie.”

            The door banged again, the vibration echoing in Andy’s skull.

            “And yet,” Andy said.

            “Well, that explains the mess in the studio,” Patrick said.

            Andy sank down against the back of the door, letting his eyes flutter closed for just a moment. If they could just stick it out, just for a bit…. Stick it out till what? His plan, he realized, offered them a minute of respite, but not much else. The fae wouldn’t evaporate at sunrise. No one was going to show up and save them. The longer they waited, the worse it was going to get. The egrigors could show up eventually, and Pete was still bleeding, and Patrick’s ankle wasn’t going to get better without a doctor. So, Andy reasoned, the only way they were getting out was by fighting their way out.

            “What exactly is a drouk?” Andy asked, trying to keep his voice steady and calm.

            “It’s,” Mrs. Witzigreuter seemed to be keeping marginally more composed than the rest of her family. “They’re a type of fae. We, my husband, my son and I, are naiads, originating from Seelie Court. In many ways, drouks are sort of like our Unseelie counterparts. They’re water fae, but shallow water, specifically. Just as we have a connection to rivers, drouks have a connection to wetlands. Bogs and marshes and swamps, you know?”

            “Mud,” Patrick said faintly. “The mud traps outside-”

            “They set them up for us,” she agreed. “To keep out any unwanted guests. To protect us.”

            “To protect you from Seelie Court,” Andy guessed. He felt like he was missing some crucial piece of this puzzle, something that could lead him to greater understanding of why this was happening. The drouk was still banging on the door, though, and he didn’t have an abundance of free time to deliberate.

            “Okay,” he said. “You left Seelie Court because you’re humanitarians who wanted to raise a kid your own way, yeah? Why did the drouks leave Unseelie Court?”

            The Witzigreuters looked at each other, and Andy felt again the pounding at his back.

            “Come on!” he said. “Why did the drouks leave? You haven’t discussed this once in all your time living together?!”

            “They said… they said they felt underappreciated. Taken for servants because of what they were.”

            Andy glanced around the room - small and cozy, like the rest of the cottage. Something was nagging at him, some sort of explanation, at least.

            “This isn’t that big of a house,” he said. “I mean, it’s not small, but you said there were a few drouks. Where do they live?”

            “Outside,” she said. “They like the rain, they said. They don’t _want_ to live in here!”

            There was a heavier bang at Andy’s back, and an angry sort of gurgling.

            “Right,” Andy said. “Okay. How would you say you treat them then? Like equals?”

            None of them responded.

            “This came out of nowhere, though,” Jordan said. “My drouk-”

            “ _Your_ drouk?” Andy asked. “What, like a swamp pet?”

            “No, I just-” Jordan looked like he might cry. “We- we’re close. He tried to save Patrick earlier.”

            “No, he didn’t,” Patrick said. “It- sorry, he- just stared at me and watched me drowning.”

            “I thought he came right to me,” Jordan said.

            The door banged.

            “JOR…. DAN,” the heavy, wet voice outside insisted.

            “What are their weaknesses?” Joe asked.

            “We’re not going to hurt them!” Jordan yelled.

            “We’ve got to do something!” Joe said.

            “How bout we start by getting out of here so we can discuss it someplace safe?” Andy pleaded. From downstairs, he heard a creak of floorboards and he froze, his heart accelerating in fear. If it wasn’t the drouks, if something else in the forest had found them here...

            Andy had to hold this together. Someone had to hold themself together. Andy looked around the room at the panicked faces, the bedspread, the lamp, the window...

            “Okay,” Andy said. “Open the window. I’ll hold onto the sheets, and you guys can take turns climbing down to the ground. Do you know how to get out of the forest safely?”

            “Yes,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said, her voice just a whisper. “There’s a path, right through-”

            “Don’t tell us!” Andy shouted. “Please, don’t tell us, just take us there. And if we get a free second, blindfold us. I don’t want anyone else knowing where we’re going. Come on, let’s go.”

            “Are you kidding me?” Joe asked. “Patrick and I can’t walk; you want us to jump out the second story window?”

            “No!” Andy shouted. “I want you to carefully scale down the wall while holding onto a makeshift rope, but quickly, because there’s a lot of very mean things that want to hurt us in this house! If you’ve got a better plan, by all fucking means tell me.”

            No one moved, and Andy raised his eyebrows. They were out of time.

            Mr. Witzigreuter threw the window upwards. It made a small opening, big enough to climb through, although it wouldn’t be pleasant. Not on his wide shoulders or the freshly opened scars on Patrick’s stomach-

            Luckily Andy didn’t have the time to dwell on that thought. He dragged a bedside table up underneath the doorknob in the hopes of keeping it shut and then he stripped the blanket and sheet from the bed. He tied their corners together and threw one end out the window. One by one he helped the family and the rest of his band out, all the while staring at the trembling door, hating when he imagined he could hear the egrigors’ voices from downstairs and hating more when he couldn’t because they really were shit out of luck if the things decided to wait for them outside.

            But soon Pete and the Witzigreuters were all outside and Patrick was climbing down the side of the house. Rappelling, really, with the use of only one foot, something that was obscurely impressive. When it was just him and Joe in the room, Andy grabbed Joe’s arm so hard it would probably leave a bruise.

            “As soon as your feet hit the ground, start running,” Andy said. “I’ll catch up.”

            “But-”

            “Really no time to argue here,” Andy said, and he hauled Joe out the window, training his eyes back on the unsteady door. It looked like it was made of hardwood, but he really didn’t want to risk it splintering in any case. He eyed the drop as Joe eased his way down. It was about a fifteen-foot drop to the ground, which, while not ideal, probably wouldn’t hurt Andy.

            Joe was shouting Andy’s instructions at everyone on the ground, and as soon as he let go of the sheets he was running. Andy cast one last glance at the door, then jumped out of the window.

            He had every intention of hitting the ground at an angle and rolling to absorb the impact, but the muddy ground had other ideas, and his side stuck in the earth, vibrations from the fall shaking through his bones. He stood up as quickly as he could and took off after the others, desperate to be anywhere but there. Even though he knew they couldn’t outrun what was chasing after them.

            “-can’t kill him!” Jordan said, though Andy wasn’t sure who he was speaking to. “I won’t, I won’t let you.”

            “If it’s us or them-” Joe’s voice was steady, even as he was running while injured.

            “NO!” Jordan said. “I don’t care, we’re not doing it.”

            Jordan stopped, and Andy skidded to a halt in the mud just past him, staring back at the kid. Jordan had turned away from them and was facing the warm glow of the house.

            “They won’t hurt me,” he said, too low for human ears.

            “Kid!” Andy shouted. He didn’t want to kill anything either, and in any case, they didn’t know if there was going to be any killing. “We have to get out of here first-”

            “No,” Jordan said. “They’ll talk to me. We’re friends.”

            Andy looked over at his band and Jordan’s parents for help, but everyone else’s faces were just as lost as Andy’s. The drouks were coming, too. Andy could see them approaching, stark white against the night.

            Earlier in the forest, one of those things had crashed up to Andy and Pete, grabbing Pete in its enormous arms and squeezing. Pete had gone blue in the face before Andy managed to get Pete away from it. They weren’t fast, but they were strong, and from the way it had swiped at Andy with its sharp and jagged nails, they clearly didn’t care if they killed anyone else trying to get to Pete.

            They had walked right into a trap, just like Andy had predicted, and with every step the drouks took towards them, the more anxiety grew in Andy’s stomach. He was weaponless and out of plans.

            “Hey,” Jordan said. His voice was low, calm, and he took a step forward. “Hey, guys. You’ve got to let my friends go.”

            The drouk closest to Jordan didn’t attack him, as Andy feared. Rather, it turned its head to the side.

            “PETE,” it said. “WE - TAKE - PETE.”

            “No,” Jordan said. “No, you can’t do that.”

            “WHY?”

            “He doesn’t want to go,” Jordan said. “You didn’t want to be there. The same people are after me too, aren’t they? Why won’t you sell me out?”

            The drouks said nothing. One of them opened its mouth, another barely intelligible stream of words pouring out like the gushing of sewer water.

            “YOU ARE ONE OF OURS.”

            “Everyone deserves the right to themselves,” Jordan said. “If you want to take him you’ll have to take me too.”

            Andy braced himself, his muscles aching from how tense he had been holding himself for so long. The silence was sustained, endless.

            “THEY - KNOW,” the drouk in front said at long last. It pointed at Pete. “HE WAS HERE. RUN.”

            Jordan put his hand on the drouk, not flinching even a little at the coldness or the sliminess.

            “Thank you,” he said. “Come on. We can send the guys off and get back to the house.”

            The drouk shook its head.

            “NOT SAFE,” it said.

            “They know we’re here too,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said in a low, hopeless voice. Jordan turned around, disbelief and confusion coloring his face. “We all have to get out of here.”

            She stepped forward to stand beside her son and took the drouk’s enormous hand.

            “Thank you,” she said. Then, with one hand on Jordan’s back, she started to lead all of them forward.

            “Mom,” Jordan pleaded. “Mom, what’s going to happen to them?”

            “I don’t know, baby,” she said. “But they’re risking a lot letting us go, so let’s not waste it, all right?”

            Andy remembered being sixteen, so he made an effort to show no signs of noticing the kid sniffling in the rain.

            “Why can’t we tell you boys the way out?” Mr. Witzigreuter asked after a few minutes of walking in relative silence. “I think all seven of us together are a much easier target than we would be split up.”

            “There’s something else in the forest,” Andy said. “Something that has… access to our minds. We can’t risk them knowing where we are. I figure, you know, if we’re lost, they probably can’t find us either.”

            “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

            Andy heard his own voice come from the trees just behind them. A little deeper and a little stronger than his own voice, actually.

            “No,” Pete said. “No, no, no, no, c’mon, no.”

            The forest was alive with noise, with the pounding of the rain and the footfalls of all sorts of creatures, but the world suddenly felt quiet to Andy. He failed to see how they had gotten off easy, considering all that had happened, but the egrigors must have disagreed.

            “Go,” Andy said to the family. “You should run, get out of here and leave this to us.”

            “Leave what to you?” Jordan asked, waiting.

            Not Joe dropped down from the canopy of the trees right in front of the kid, black eyes glittering.

            “Don’t worry, kid,” he said, although Jordan had already taken a large step backwards. “We can’t hurt you. Andy’s just overcompensating. Like he always does.”

            “No,” Pete moaned, his voice a little louder. Pleading.

            “So little faith,” Not Pete said. “Why do you assume we wanna hurt anybody? Maybe we were just shocked that someone could hero-worship guys like, you know, _you_.”

            “We just wanted to fix the perspective around here,” Not Patrick said, his voice coming from somewhere behind Andy. Surrounding them.

            “No!” Pete whined. Without looking at Pete, Andy could tell that he was shaking, he could hear it in his voice. “No, no, stop it!”

            “What are you so afraid of?” Not Pete said. “We’re not going to touch you, Pete. Just one of your friends. We’ll even let you pick which one we take this time.”

            He stepped out of the shadows, ice white and smiling already. “Patrick’s already had a turn, so maybe he’s immune to the pain. Andy’s the strongest. You’re still pissed at Joe. There’s reason enough for anybody.”

            They were all standing still, and Andy felt that they had lost all hope at that point. What good would fighting do? Patrick seemed to have the right idea earlier that night: stare at the ground, make no noise, wait for it to end.

            “It’s okay if you can’t think of an answer,” Not Joe said.

            “Maybe you’ll be inspired once we get started,” Not Patrick said. Andy heard a movement from the forest and turned in time to see the egrigor lunging towards him, inhuman and almost unreal, like a nightmare.

            “NO!” Pete screamed, and just before his hands met Andy’s throat, the sky exploded with light.

            Andy fell backwards, away from the light and sound, a thousand times brighter than a flood of camera flashes, or the glare of stage lights. It was over in seconds, but Andy kept his eyes closed, the afterimage still bright yellow in the wake of the flash. It was only when he realized his ears were ringing that he even noticed that the bright white light explosion had come with a sound of thunder.

            With great effort, Andy forced his eyes open and sat up. There were still spots of white winking along the edges of his vision, but he could see again. Not Patrick, still standing just in front of Andy, still looking immaculate save for his hair, which was blackened to ash. His eyes met Andy’s for a fraction of a second, and then he crumbled, dissolving into non-existence without leaving a trace.

            Andy turned over his shoulder to look at Pete, the only person still standing. His eyes were burning gold, and tiny blue-white flickers of electricity licked between his fingers.

            Everyone else had fallen down to the ground. As Andy glanced around, however, he saw that the egrigors couldn’t be included in that. The ground had gone ashy all around them, like the lightning had struck in more than one place at once. Like all four of them had been taken out.  

            Pete’s eyes slowly began to dim, glowing soft like embers and then flickering out altogether. He sank down to his knees, his head wound still trickling blood. He met Andy’s gaze with an almost pleading expression, but Andy had no idea what he was asking.

            “We-” Andy started to speak, and his voice cracked so badly it was inaudible. He tried again. “We should get out of here. Patrick said that P- that he came back fast last time.”

            “What are those things?”

            “We should go.”

            The Witzigreuters knew their way through the forest, leading them to the edge of the trees in no time at all. They skirted around the border of the forest to get back to the car, avoiding the woods no matter how much faster that path would have been. No one, not even the fae, seemed inclined to return to the shelter of the trees.

            They walked a little hurriedly, but at a pace where Joe and Patrick could reasonably limp alongside them. Andy tried talking to Pete, in an attempt to lighten the mood.

            “Shame you didn’t pull out the lightning trick earlier,” he said, realizing only after he said it how bad it sounded.

            “I didn’t do it on purpose,” Pete said. “I just. I just wanted it to stop, and that happened.”

            “It worked,” Andy said. “Saved the day.”      

            “Deus ex magic-lightning,” Pete said dully.

            There was no way for seven people to comfortably fit into one midsize sedan, but the group of them did it anyway, sticking Pete on top of Patrick and Joe making a face at the crowd and climbing into the trunk. Back at the hotel, Pete paid for a second room for the family, though all of them still converged in Fall Out Boy’s hotel room, keeping their voices low since it was well after three in the morning.

            Andy wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do. Apologize to the Witzigreuters? These people were now homeless, but the drouks they were living with had started this whole thing. The family, as it turned out, had already thought about that.

            “We have a proposition,” Mr. Witzigreuter said. “It seems that there are some parties interested in our son, and we’re ill suited to protect him against any attackers. The thing is, though, we were already looking for you, Pete.”

            Andy didn’t blame Pete for looking taken aback.

            “But I thought you said-”

            “We weren’t involved in drawing you out here,” he said. “But we heard there was another unaligned fae, one who had been raised that way, and we were, well, concerned.”

            “We didn’t know if you knew much about who you were,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said. “We wanted—well, before all this happened, we were hoping we could help you. Teach you some aspects about fae you couldn’t learn on your own without subjecting yourself to the courts. It is dangerous, you know. Powers like ours, they have to be well controlled, and you-”

            “Don’t know how?” Pete guessed.     

            They made uncomfortable faces, but the meaning was clear. It didn’t seem like Pete knew what he was doing, no. Not if he could have a panic attack and summon lightning strong enough to kill four superpowered beings on the spot.

            “What we had in mind was, if you would be so generous, taking Jordan with you,” she said. “We can stay here and face the courts, but you, you could protect him. Not all the time, just… enough. Keep him nearby. And in return-”

            “I could give you some faery one-oh-one lessons,” Jordan said, smiling like it was a hilarious joke. “Not, like, how to use your powers or anything. The lightning is sick, but I’m still a water guy. But general stuff. Weird things that come with the territory.”

            “Like mysterious impregnations,” Patrick muttered.

            “What?” Jordan said.

            “Don’t worry about it,” Pete said. “I just… my ex-girlfriend, she ended up pregnant even though… um, even though it had been a while.”

            Mr. Witzigreuter’s eyes went wide.

            “How long?” he asked. Pete looked, understandably, rather uncomfortable.

            “Six months, I guess,” he said. The fae all started laughing.

            “That’s not that long,” Mrs. Witzigreuter said. “Oh, hmm, you don’t know much about how we work, do you?”

            “What does that mean?” Pete asked.

            “Fae have some difficulty with fertility,” Mr. Witzigreuter said. “We were trying for Jordan for… oh, about sixty years before we had him. Since it’s so difficult, fae sperm is, ah, resilient.”

            Pete looked more embarrassed than the teenager whose parents were talking about sperm, but he spoke up anyway.

            “What do you mean by resilient?” he asked.

            “Oh, a woman could get pregnant, hmm, I’d say up to five years afterwards,” he said. Pete froze.

            “Five years?” he said. Andy felt a little bit bug-eyed himself. “Did- five years?!”

            “Well, again, it’s uncommon, although it’s easier with a faery and a human than with two faeries. No one really knows why.”

            “FIVE YEARS!”

            “It’s still uncommon,” Mr. Witzigreuter said, he made a sympathetic face. “But possible. And things like this are all the more reason that you need a teacher. Someone who understands our world.”

            Pete cringed away at the word “our,” but didn’t disagree.

            “Thing is,” Pete said at last. “I’ve kind of already got a kid on the way. And we’re touring so often. I’m not sure I could-”

            “Dude, I don’t want you to adopt me!” Jordan said. “I was just… I was kind of hoping I could do the music thing with you guys.”

            “His stuff’s good,” Patrick said. His voice seemed to come out of nowhere, and Andy noted with a hint of unease that Patrick had been quieter than usual.

            Andy didn’t want to think about the reason for that. He didn’t want to think about the egrigors, or about the words, or really anything about Patrick right now.

            “I listened, a little,” Patrick said. “Before you guys showed up. He played me some stuff,” Patrick looked at Jordan. “It’s good.”

            “You in a band?” Pete asked, and Andy could hear the click as his voice shifted, at least a little, into business mode.

            “No,” Jordan said. “Mr. Wentz, I grew up in the woods.  But I mess around with music.”

            “Solo is fine,” Pete said. “We can… we can look into that. You got a name in mind? Because, no offense, but ‘Witzigreuter’ isn’t really the kind of name for a solo artist that pops off the radio lineup.”

            “The Ready Set,” Jordan said. “I mean. I guess it’s more of a band name, but I’m attached.”

            “Not bad,” Pete said. “I’ll make some phone calls, okay? Whatever happens, I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

            It took them a while to shoo the family out of the room, but at long last (and after a few showers to wash a night’s worth of mud off) they all finally got to sleep.

            The morning would be rough, Andy knew already. They had a lot to deal with, from the ransacked studio to starting their album over from scratch. From the hollow look in Patrick’s eyes to the way Andy couldn’t really sleep. That night, he just laid still with his eyes closed and tried not to think about black eyes, mud monsters, and inescapable forests.

            But it wasn’t all bad.

            Morning came with a warm continental breakfast that actually had sweet, rich vegan muffins, for once. It came with plane tickets home and the promise of seeing Carmilla in just a few hours. And, best of all, it came with an unexpected phone call from Neil Avron before they even left the hotel.

            “You still want me to send you guys the bill?” he asked after telling Andy what he already knew, that someone had been in the computer again and Fall Out Boy’s music was completely non-recoverable.

            “Yeah,” Pete said bracingly. “Yeah. We can split it up once you give us the number.”

            Neil gave them a number. It was way too small.

            “That… can’t be right,” Andy said. Joe glared, and hey, maybe Andy shouldn’t have been looking a gift horse in the mouth, but Neil agreed.

            “Yeah, it was twice that, but some guys dropped by here yesterday, said you were having a bad enough week and wanted to help. Half the damages got covered by your friends in Panic at the Disco.”

            The four of them stared at each other, all of them looking embarrassingly close to tears, because it was stupid, but that was a lot of money, and it was really sweet, and if Andy thought about it too hard, he was going to get _really_ emotional.

            “They left a message that said: ‘I’ll try to warn you guys next time,’ and said you’d know what that meant.”

            “Thanks,” Pete said. “We do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This chapter was mud flavored angst! Long time coming, but not as long as it might have been, and for not nearly so long of a chapter. I hope you're not disappointed! Opposite last chapter, this was shorter than I expected it would be when I actually wrote it out. Anyway, I'm hoping the Whumptober makes up for length, haha. I don't feel like I have as much to say about this chapter as I usually do? The hero monologue thing Patrick has has been sitting in the notes on my phone forever, and that scene was the inspiration for the chapter around it, so I'm hoping it was good. I do not know anything about Jordan Witzigreuter's parents, but I doubt they raised him in the woods with slime creatures - still, you never know! (Was this reference wasted? Do The Kids (tm) still remember The Ready Set? 2009 was such an era) The weird "trip no further pretty sweeting" was something I had in mind for a long time because I'm way too obsessed with The Haunting of Hill House (novel and netflix show both) and, for the curious, the USB smashing scene was the thing that made me so sad I had to stop writing for a while. 
> 
> Anyway, lots to look forward to ahead! More angst, of course, but more plot building, a little more comedy, a newborn child... guys, I'm so excited for this whole season. 
> 
> Unrelated, but if anyone fits the bill, I have a project in mind that I'd really like to try, but it's kind of odd. I'm looking for an artist, but I don't want to clog this note up with too many details, so message me if you're interested.
> 
> Thanks for reading!  
> Chapter title by Paramore


	6. Coffee Shop Soundtrack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The band is tired. They're stressed, they're trying to finish the album as quickly as possible, and Ashlee is going to give birth any day now. 
> 
> Naturally, when they go to do a routine investigation on some werewolf incidents in norther California, things go astray. It is Fall Out Boy, after all. When do things go right for them?

            Neil’s studio had become a kind of second home to Andy. Not because it was homey, certainly not because he felt at home there, but because he spent all his time there. Some days, as the hours of daylight shortened, the band was there before the sun rose and they left long after night fell.

            Starting the album over from scratch meant pushing it back again, and it was supposed to be ready for presentation to management the first time in early summer, the second time a few weeks after the studio got trashed. Island Def Jam wasn’t happy. Neither were they, for that matter, trying their best to recreate their favorite songs and to churn out others to replace the ones that were lost even to memory. As a result of all the internal and external pressure-

            “You know, given that he’s not alcoholic yet,” Joe said, voice low and fists clenched, “Someone should get Patrick a drink. Or a whole fucking bottle.”

            “Maybe,” Andy said. Joe gave him a look, but Andy just sighed. Patrick was bullying Pete on the other side of the soundproof glass at the moment, so they weren’t in danger of being heard.

            They’d been suffering over the same song all day, but it felt like much longer than that. The whole time, Patrick had been shaking his head and demanding they do the track over - “No, like this!” with a fervency that bordered on mania. Andy and Joe watched, too exhausted to do much but stare blankly at the window, as Pete ran through the bass again, and Patrick all but pushed him out into the other side of the studio.

            “My hands haven’t hurt this much since I was fourteen,” Pete said.

            “Is that a learning bass thing, or a masturbation thing?” Joe asked.

            “Don’t laugh,” Pete said earnestly. “You’re next.”

            Joe blanched, and Andy patted him on the back. Joe got the worst of Patrick’s in-studio ire, mostly in the form of Patrick snatching the guitar away from him and saying “Christ, just let me do it.”

            Granted, Andy admitted that he was thinking a little uncharitably. They were all tense and snappish. Joe had been… and Pete had been… but Andy couldn’t let himself think names about any of them. He couldn’t think badly of anyone because, apparently, his fucking thoughts weren’t safe.

            For example, he couldn’t think that Patrick was a _goddamn douchebag fascist control-freak_ no. No, he couldn’t think that. Like they were in _1984_ or something, Andy didn’t have safe thoughts. He didn’t think Joe was a _self-absorbed, violent, passive aggressive victim-blaming_ anything, because that wasn’t safe. He didn’t think _this is all Pete’s fault they’re after him why don’t they just take him already_ because. Because every time he came close to thinking a negative word about one of them, he could see Patrick’s chest in his mind, raised white scars in the form of words absolutely covering his skin.

            Andy was, with the exception of people actively doing harm, a pacifist. He was also, with the exception of human blood, vegan. He took no pleasure in causing people harm, but he was only (mostly) human. He couldn’t help but think things about people, couldn’t help having nasty thoughts. But the concept of some of the nasty things he had thought branded onto Patrick’s skin made Andy want to vomit.

            He wanted to ask if Patrick knew who said what, because Andy didn’t. He didn’t know what offhand thought he had had. He didn’t remember specific things he had thought about him, didn’t remember if he had thought “weak” or “needy” or “idiot.”

            But Patrick wore layers, and they didn’t talk about it. Nor did Andy, Pete, and Joe discuss Joe and Pete’s fight. Andy was fairly certain that Patrick had heard nothing about it, and perhaps assumed Joe had just fallen nose-first into the ground. They walked on eggshells, talked around everything. Andy was just waiting for the egrigors to show up and say the catalytic words to make them implode on themselves. Again.

            But that evening, before Patrick could even suggest Joe come in to record, Neil kicked them out, saying he would be there again in the morning and that they needed to get some sleep. Andy let out a long breath. He was ready to go home, relieve the babysitter, and hopefully spend a bit of time with Carmilla before he went to bed.

            It was a good plan, but tragically, they were all still in the parking lot when Pete got a call. If Andy had just cleared out a little faster, he wouldn’t have been there for Pete to shout out-

            “Wait, hold on a sec,” Pete said. “I think we have a situation.”

            Andy said nothing, instead just sighed deeply. Joe, on the other hand, groaned out loud.

            “Dude, I am exhausted,” he said. “Can we tell the monsters to give us, like, one night off?”

            “Believe it or not, I don’t think that’s how this works,” Pete said, voice dry. “Look, I’m not thrilled either, but just hold on a second, okay?”

            He turned from them to go back to talking into the phone, and Andy leaned up against his car. His head was throbbing and he wanted, more than anything else, to be home and asleep and _away from his band_.

            “Yeah, yeah, just- just give me a sec!” Pete pleaded, then hung up. He faced the others with a would-be excited grin.

            “Anyone want to hunt down a rogue werewolf?” he asked. He looked at them for a second, his face falling fast, and then added, “First thing tomorrow morning? The label would give us a break from studio time.”

            “YES,” Joe said emphatically. “Oh, fuck yes, where are we going?”

            “Meet up at our place,” Pete said. “We’ll leave at nine - sweetie don’t give me that look - we’ll meet at nine and head straight out. The problem is all the way up in Napa Valley, so a good, long day. The girl who called me said it looks like it could be just one guy doing the killings, but no one’s sighted it yet.”

            “No one’s actually seen a werewolf?” Joe repeated, sounding more dubious this time. “So, we’re absolutely sure that it actually is-”

            “Nothing else could leave bites like that,” Pete said. “Also, Ferrum’s been with someone. One kid started turning.”

            Joe flinched, but it was dark enough that Andy wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed.

            “Anyway, we should head out tonight,” Pete said. “But let’s just… give it till morning anyway.”

            Andy noticed that Pete looked every bit as tired as he felt, so his decision was more than understandable. And, as bad as Andy felt for pushing the problem off for another day, he needed to sleep. They all needed to rest at some point. It meant he could go home and eat an entire box of MorningStar corndogs and read Carmilla a story and sleep like the dead.

            “First thing in the morning?” Joe repeated wearily.

            “First thing,” Pete said with a nod, and they each took off, each of them looking various degrees of grateful. Andy was far too busy feeling guilty about the insults he might think about his band to bother feeling guilty for how eager and grateful he was to get away from them.

            Andy dreamed thick, sticky nightmares. He was lost in a house that looked unbearably familiar, but it was too dark inside to see anything properly. Any photos or decorations that would have given the place away were obscured by a strange light that was thick as smoke. All sorts of noises were coming from the walls, sounds like wolves snarling, and the familiar sound of his own voice laughing.

            He walked up a set of stairs in the nightmare house, each step obscured by the gray smoky light. The unnatural fog was so opaque that Andy couldn’t see the final step, and instead was sent pitching forward onto the landing.

            Up ahead was a brighter light, one that flickered and pulsed dark red through the smoke. Andy crawled forward on his hands and knees, afraid of how the ground might change if he stood up. When he was close enough to feel the heat, he looked up to see a huge pyre in the middle of the room, flames licking all around it. He realized he could see no wood, and the fire was burning in an odd shape. Some of the flames nearest him sputtered, and he could see that the flames were covering a glass box with a child inside it, sitting cross legged and staring out at him.

            “ _A cage fit for a vampire_ ,” the boy said, and the whole thing exploded in a shower of sparks.

            Andy stirred in the night and rolled over. The dreams he had afterwards were benign, for once.

            Morning came too fast, and Andy was back at Pete and Patrick’s house. Patrick was outside, walking down to the driveway on crutches with a bemused look on his face.

            “You think I could attach knives to the end of these?” he asked, waving one of the crutches up in the air. “Because otherwise I am not going to be much use in a fight.”

            “Smack the bad guys in the neck,” Joe suggested.

            Patrick grinned, but he still looked a little sad to Andy’s eyes. He kept looking at his crutches, and though he would be off them by the time the album dropped, he had to stay on them for a while.

            Pete ran out last, hair still frizzy in the back and only one of his arms stuck through the sleeve of his jacket.

            “Running late?” Joe asked.

            Pete looked annoyed as he threw open the driver’s side door of his car.

            “We… stayed in bed too long,” he said, and Andy could all but see the heat rising in Pete’s face.

            “Think we have time to stop for breakfast on the way?” Pete said quickly. “I could really go for some coffee.”

            “If something’s on the way, sure,” Joe said. “But we’re on a bit of a deadline, if you care to remember.”

            Pete scowled at the back of Joe’s head, and Andy braced himself. But he didn’t say anything, and neither did Joe. They were, above all else, civil.

            They turned on the radio and no one complained. Patrick rolled down the window and again, no one complained. The wind pressure wasn’t exactly pleasant, but Andy could see how many layers Patrick was in and could still see the edge of one scarred word above the top of his collar. If all four of them managed to finish this album alive, Andy thought, it would be a miracle. The good news was that they only had two songs left to finish, and maybe, just maybe (though it felt almost obscenely optimistic to hope this much) this monster-hunting mission would be good for them. Maybe it would help them to get on decent terms with each other again.

            They were less than a mile from the ramp to get onto the highway when Pete shouted for Joe to stop.

            “Coffee,” Pete said, pointing at a very run-down looking coffee shop with an old, sun-bleached sign that read “Air People Coffee.”

            Joe rolled his eyes but pulled into the mostly empty parking lot. The coffee shop looked like it was in a strip mall, but there were no other stores there. There were a few other cars in the lot, but the place looked desolate even through the windows.

            “Has to be better than Starbucks,” Andy said bracingly, and he got out of the car with his band.

            The coffee shop was just as lackluster inside. All shades of beige and gray counters and formica tabletops, and one bored college aged boy behind the counter, his long black braids swept up into a ponytail that went through the back of his cap. The barista had a nametag that read “Ainsel” on his apron and was most notably, kind of gorgeous. Andy was still straight, but looking at Ainsel, he couldn’t help but think that, if he had to pick a boy...

            “Welcome to Air People, are you ready for me to take your order?”

            Andy glanced up at the menu, where they had a surprisingly large selection of vegan coffee. Maybe it wasn’t that bad.

            “Vegan… forest latte?” Andy read aloud. “Like forest chocolate?”

            Ainsel shrugged.

            “Never had it,” he said. “Customers say it tastes pretty good.”

            “I’ll try the vegan forest latte,” Andy said.

            “Black coffee,” Pete said. “With, erm, four shots of espresso.”

            “Just a regular latte,” Joe said.

            “I’ll try the special,” Patrick said, squinting at the chalkboard behind him. The boy behind the counter looked surprised.

            “Don’t get a lot of people ordering the specials,” he said. “But whatever you say.”

            He rang the four of them up and had four large styrofoam cups sitting on the counter in minutes. Joe offered to drive as they walked out, because Pete looked almost indecently invested in his coffee after he poured half a canister of sugar into it.

            Then they were on the interstate, the car full of mid-morning sun, and Pete was briefing them on a monster-hunting mission. It was almost like they had gone back to another time, a simpler, happier time, back in Illinois, when they had no idea what they were getting into.

            “Obviously, we don’t know if this is a pack or just one werewolf,” Pete said. “But the reports we’ve got definitely cite wolf bites.”

            “New infections?” Joe asked, one hand on the wheel and the other holding his cup of coffee.

            “Other than the one kid, it’s only fatalities,” Pete said. “The bodies - well, it sounds pretty gory, actually. One of these guys had his ribcage torn open and his heart missing.”

            “That’s… disgusting,” Andy said. “Do you think they ate it?”

            “If they didn’t, something else did,” Pete said, looking faintly green as well. “Nobody found it. He chugged the rest of his coffee in two enormous gulps, then crushed the empty cup in his hand. “The worst thing is how fast it escalated. Last week some guy died, then three the next night, and last night they found ten bodies scattered across a few counties.”

            Andy felt ill, his insides hot with guilt. He had been so sick of his band last night that he hadn’t wanted to do anything. Could they have prevented ten people from dying? He didn’t really want to think about it.

            “So, track down the bad guy, figure out why he’s killing, stop him or kill him?” Joe asked.

            “Easier said than done,” Patrick said. “How big are the hunting grounds?”

            “Big,” Pete admitted. “A few counties big, but hopefully the call of another wolf will get their attention.”

            “Oh, so am I being offered up as bait this time?” Joe asked.

            “No, you’re using your strengths to help us find another wolf,” Pete said. Andy glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw that Patrick was nursing his coffee, looking too sleepy to argue with anyone. Could be worse, he thought.

            They rode mostly in silence for the better part of an hour, the urban sprawl of LA thinning the further they went until there was more desert than building. The silence got tenser and heavier, and Andy thought he could no longer stand it when Pete finally spoke up.

            “Hey, Joe? Can you pull over?”

            Andy turned to look at Pete, who was leaning forward, his knuckles white against the seat of the car. He looked a little like he was going to vomit, but more than that he looked unbearably anxious. The biggest tell for Andy that something was wrong, was how small and vulnerable Pete’s voice sounded. Patrick had turned to look at him too.

            “Are you okay?” Joe asked.

            “I feel- I feel really weird,” Pete said. His breathing was getting shallower, and his head was bent over. “Jesus, please, please pull over, I feel- I think I’m gonna throw up.”

            “We’re on the interstate,” Joe said, casting a worried glance over his shoulder. “There’s nowhere to pull over right now, can you wait until the next exit?”

            “I don’t know,” Pete said. He had buried his head all the way in his hands, but he was shaking his head too, making soft, breathy noises like he was in pain. “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. Fuck, it hurts all over like - like growing pains or-”

            “Baby, shh, it’s okay,” Patrick said hurriedly. He put one hand on Pete’s shoulder, but Pete flinched back, the sheet of his hair dragging behind him.

            And Pete’s hair should not have been that long. Nor had that hoodie been so baggy on him when they had left his house.

            “Pete,” Andy said. “Can you look at me?”

            Pete shook his head, at first like he was shaking his head no, and then convulsively, back and forth like he could shake something away.

            “No, no,” he said. “I can feel it, something’s wrong, really really _wrong_!”

            On the last word, his voice cracked, shooting up an octave. Joe spun his head round again, the car swerving for a second before he got control of it again.

            “Pete?” Patrick said, his voice now much more apprehensive. “What is it?”

            The longer Andy stared at Pete, the more sure he was that Pete was _changing_. His body was moving, shrinking and stretching under his clothes like his skin was bubbling just out of sight. Pete made one last loud whimper, then went quiet, his breathing steadying.

            “Do I still need to pull over?” Joe asked, glancing over his shoulder at Pete, still curled all the way in on himself.

            “I think it’s over,” Pete whispered, barely loud enough to be heard over the engine. His voice sounded wrong, even that quiet, though Andy didn’t know what was wrong with it.

            “Baby,” Patrick tried again, “What’s wrong?”

            Slowly, agonizingly slowly, Pete pulled his hands down from his face and lifted his head up. The moment Andy saw Pete’s face, he jumped backwards so quickly that he slammed his head into the door.

            Pete was young. Really young. He was an especially small and acne-ridden thirteen-year-old, looking up at Andy with big, terrified eyes.

            “Oh,” Andy said. “Oh. Holy shit.”

            “How bad is it?” Pete asked in a squeaky, middle school voice.

            “Oh, fuck me,” Joe whispered, not turning around this time, just keeping his eyes on the road. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

            “Swee- Pete,” Patrick said. “Oh my God.”

            “I feel really weird,” Pete squeaked out. His face was something of a mountain of acne, and his eyes looked wavery with tears. And he was definitely, absolutely, thirteen. From his gangly shoulders to his long, kind of greasy hair.

            “You look a little different,” Patrick said. “Um. Do you want to see?”

            “No!” Pete shouted, the pitch of his voice reaching up and splitting on the word. He whimpered yet again, pressing his hands to his face and pulling them back in horror. “Is it - how old am I?”

            “Um,” Patrick was deep breathing, almost as though he was trying to make up for Pete, who was definitely still hyperventilating. “You look like… you definitely look younger than fifteen.”

            Pete scrambled to a full sitting up position, looking into the rearview mirror. His expression got more distraught, but the whole image couldn’t get much more horrifying for Andy. Pete was dwarfed by his own clothes, and the child-Pete looked almost elfin, with big, deep eyes, and a small, sallow face.

            “I’m… I’m thirteen,” Pete said. He was still looking at the mirror, but he didn’t appear to be seeing it. “I’m THIRTEEN!”

            “Pete, it’s gonna be okay,” Patrick said, but Pete was shaking his head.

            “What? What the hell could ever be okay about this? I’m in the middle of puberty and my moods are out of whack and I’m less than five feet tall and my face is so oily that it hurts!”

            “We will figure this out,” Patrick said, much more sure than Andy felt. “We’ve dealt with plenty of curses before. Whatever this is, we will get you back to normal.”

            Andy hoped Patrick was right. He couldn’t imagine dating someone who turned into, well, a child. Pete whined.

            “I’m tiny,” he said.

            “Do you still want me to pull over?” Joe asked.

            “Looking like this?” Pete’s voice got only higher, so high Andy winced. “Keep driving!”

            “But we have to do something,” Joe said. “I mean… we should call someone?”

            Joe was probably right, but it was hard for Andy to focus on the problem at hand. They were still barrelling down the highway and Pete wouldn’t stop making distressed noises and, out of nowhere, Andy was getting a massive, impossible to ignore headache. Two burning-hot spots of pain were rapidly intensifying on top of his head, and it was hard to focus on anything else.

            “Do you think,” Andy asked slowly, focusing on the enunciation of every word. “Do you think whatever this curse is, it got more than just Pete?”

            “Well, shit, dude, don’t jinx it!” Joe said. Though he hadn’t really raised his voice, Andy’s head throbbed in response.

            “Fix me,” Pete whined. He had one nervous hand twisted up in his hair, the other one clenched tight in his lap. He looked really young, even young for thirteen. The tops of his shoulders didn’t seem nearly high up enough against the backseat of the car, and under the clothes he was swimming in, there were no tattoos. Andy hadn’t even known Pete until he was six years older than this, and if he hadn’t seen photos of him when he was younger, he wouldn’t have recognized the child.

            “It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay,” Patrick said. He held one hand out, not quite touching the gangly kid in the backseat with him. “We will get you back and figure this out. I promise.” He kept staring at Pete, wide eyed.

            They were all quiet for a minute.

            “Am I still hot?” Pete asked. Patrick made a distressed face.

            “I - b- Pete I cannot think of an acceptable answer to that question,” Patrick said eventually. “I don’t want to make you sad but if I said yes that would be so much worse. You’re, like, a kid.”

            Pete looked close to tears. He crossed his arms over his chest and huffed.

            “Okay,” Joe said, still speeding down the highway. “Okay, so it’s not our little mirror friends, and it’s probably not your dad, unless this is some weird bonding exercise.”

            “The coffee?” Andy asked. His head was still throbbing, and by then his hands hurt too. His fingers kept curling up into fists, the muscles in them tense and tight. His skin felt tight all over.

            “Don’t say that,” Joe said. “We all drank the coffee.”

            “Yeah, I know,” Andy said. “And I don’t feel good either.”

            Andy curled forward on himself, his stomach roiling like the coffee was boiling inside him. His fingers felt stiffer, and two bright points of pain on the top of his head throbbed worse than ever.

            “Actually, Joe, maybe you should look for a place to pull over,” Andy said, barely able to get the words out. Joe gave Andy a terrified look, and his eyes only got bigger when he actually caught sight of Andy.

            “Oh, holy shit,” Joe whispered. “Dude.”

            Andy slammed his head back against the headrest as he felt the top of his scalp stretching, tearing under his hair. He lifted his hands up to press them to his head, but rather than the feeling of his fingers against his skin, it felt like he was bumping rocks against his head.

            Andy finally had the presence of mind, through the pain, to turn and look at his reflection in the window. In spite of all he changes he could feel, the first thing Andy noticed was his bright, shiny black nose, almost lacquered against the rest of his face. He stared at it for a long time, watched it twitch, and could almost make sense of the image in the window until he looked up and saw his antlers.

            “Oh,” Andy said. The antlers were, even as he stared at them, still growing. “Oh.”

            His hooves (HOOVES!!!) were frozen up near his face. The antlers that had sprouted from the top of his head were getting taller and branching out as they grew. Right before they poked into the top of the car, he slumped down in his seat. He felt his feet shrink and curl in on themselves like his hands had done, and his shoes fell off.

            Andy wanted to say something, wanted to scream or swear, but he felt a little beyond shouting. In spite of sliding lower, he could feel his antlers brushing against the top of the car. He could feel his antlers. He could _feel_ his antlers.

            Andy could feel a scream bubbling up inside him. He tried to swallow, to calm himself, but he turned and caught sight of Joe’s horrified, frozen gaze, and Andy could hold the noise in no longer.

            “HONK!”

            The whole car jumped at the noise, even Andy.

            “Did you just honk?” Patrick asked him.

            “I think so,” Andy said. He honked again, the frightened sound escaping him before he could stop it. “Oh God. Oh, fuck, I’m a- I’m a fucking deer!”

            He honked again. He moved to place his hand over his mouth, but he caught sight of the hoof before he knocked his teeth out.

            “You’re- you’ve stopped changing,” Patrick said. He had a hopeful smile on his face, like he was forcing it, trying to make them feel less horrified, somehow. “The antlers stopped growing. So, um. I guess you’re not a deer? You’re just, um…”

            “You’re a furry,” Pete said. Andy let out an angry honk.

            “You’re too young to talk about furries, pipsqueak,” Andy said. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling his hooves scrape him through his shirt. The empty coffee cup from his latte was rolling on the floor of the car, bumping up against the shoes that no longer fit Andy.

            Joe looked at Andy, looked away, and then let out one quick burst of hysterical laughter.

            “What?” Andy snapped.

            “Andy, you-” he giggled again. “Is this- is this more than you bargained for?”

            “I will gore you with these antlers,” Andy said. His head had stopped throbbing, but he still felt phantom pain around the point from which his antlers had sprouted.

            “Okay, I’m sorry. Let’s calm down,” Joe suggested, his voice a little higher than usual. “The coffee. Do we think this was the coffee?”

            “I finished mine first,” Pete squeaked out. Then whined - “I put in four shots of espresso and I don’t even feel caffeinated!”

            “Well, at your age four shots of espresso is too much, so maybe that’s good,” Joe said, getting a furious glare from Pete in response.

            “So, Joe and I just wait?” Patrick said.

            “We can turn around at the next exit,” Joe said. “And we’ll go back, and, uh. Demand to know what’s wrong. And then we’ll fix it and then we’ll go take care of the werewolf thing and it will be fine!”

            His voice kept rising, and Andy kept his eyes fixed on Joe. Andy hadn’t exactly been paying attention to how quickly everyone had been drinking their Starbucks-knockoff coffee, but he was pretty sure Joe hadn’t taken that much longer finishing his drink than Andy had. Sure enough, the longer Andy looked at Joe, the more he saw that his face was changing. Joe’s jawline seemed to be softening, the stubble on his cheeks receding.

            Andy wanted to say something but didn’t want to open his mouth for fear of honking again.

            “Hey, Joe?” Patrick said gently. “Um.”

            “What?!” Joe shouted, turning to glare at the backseat before turning back. His hands, white-knuckled against the wheel, looked slightly smaller than usual.

            “I think you’re changing-”

            “I-know-I’m-changing-thank-you-Patrick!”

            Possibly because he transformed regularly, Joe’s transformation looked smoother, more natural than Pete’s looked or Andy’s felt. He kept driving, kept his face relatively stoic as his jaw softened and his chest swelled. It was mesmerizing to watch, but also hard to look at as well. After a minute or so of watching in silence, Joe was- well, he was still recognizably Joe, but also very, very feminine.

            “Well,” Patrick said. “Um. You look nice?”

            “Please don’t,” Joe said. He brushed his smooth jaw and glanced in the rearview mirror. His eyes looked wider and rounder, his lips somehow fuller. And, strange as Andy felt about thinking it, he made kind of a hot girl. “Okay. Okay. I am turning around as soon as I get the chance. Patrick?”

            “Yeah?”

            “How do you feel?”

            Patrick looked absolutely horrified as he glanced around at all of them: Andy with his antlers, Joe with his breasts and round face, and tiny little Pete, curled up in his seat and looking petulant. He glanced down at his own coffee cup, then back up.

            “Fine,” Patrick said. “Fine right now. But, um, I ordered the daily special. What’s going to happen to me?”

            “Apparently something kinky,” Joe said. Even feminine, his voice still had the familiar touch of sarcasm to it. “Since we’ve got genderswap coffee, furry coffee-”

            “We are right back to reminding everyone that children are not sexy,” Patrick said. “Like, that had better not be a kink thing. I will have some fucking words to say with the people selling this coffee.”

            “Do you feel any weird pain?” Andy asked.

            “Heat?” Pete asked.

            “Sudden dicklessness?” Joe asked.

            “Thankfully, no,” Patrick said.

            “Dicklessness?” Andy repeated. In spite of the fact that he had pretty painful antlers sprouting from the top of his head, he suddenly felt worse for someone else. “Did it- did it, like, recede? Or drop off?”

            “It disappeared, and I’d rather not talk about it,” Joe said.

            “I do feel a little weird,” Patrick admitted. “Like - fuck, I don’t know. Like, warm? I really don’t know how to describe this. I feel kinda _big_.”

            Before Pete could stick his foot all the way in his mouth (because Andy could _see_ the “Baby-you’re-perfect-just-the-way-you-are” speech about to escape him and that was so not what Patrick needed right then) Andy turned sharply to face Patrick, wincing a little as his antlers tore lines in the cloth roof of the car.

            “Joe,” Andy said, his eyes fixed warily on Patrick. “We can’t turn around at the exit. Pull over now.”

            “Why?” Patrick asked. He had his arms crossed and he didn’t look very dangerous, but Andy was running on magic intuition.

            “Because what if that means you’re about to turn into something a lot larger than a human?” Andy asked.

            Patrick blanched and Joe swore.

            “We’re on a fuckin’ bridge, dude,” he said. “How do you feel?”

            “Like a pipe bomb, but I’m gonna pin that on you guys,” Patrick said. He was still staring at the three of them, and Andy held his right hoof up over his shiny black nose like he would cover it with his hand, embarrassed. Sure, Pete and Joe were affected, but Andy felt especially like a circus act, what with his antlers and lack of hands and feet. He also thought he felt a strange protuberance at the base of his spine, but he was trying not to think about it. He didn’t want to have a _tail_.

            Patrick fidgeted in his seat, tucking at the collar of his shirt.

            “I feel a little weird,” he said. He was rubbing at his neck, squirming in his seat. “My skin feels tight.”

            “Take off your clothes,” Joe said. The car picked up speed as he accelerated. Andy could see the guardrails of the bridge stretching out a long ways in front of them, and they weren’t in the right lane to pull off to the side.

            “What?!” Patrick said. “I’m not - what?!”

            “If you’re going to turn into something entirely different you could rip out of them, I speak from experience,” Joe said. “And when you turn back human, you’ll be thankful to have wearable pants.”

            “Who says I’m turning into something else?” Patrick asked, though he couldn’t seem to stop running his hands over his skin. “Maybe I’ll just - I don’t know, grow a tail or turn eighty!”

            “I regularly shapeshift, and that sounds like you’re going to turn into something else, now for the love of all that is holy, take off your clothes.”

            “We’re on a highway!” Patrick said. “Anyone could see!”

            Pete let out a loud sigh and started digging around under his feet.

            “We’ve got a blanket in here somewhere…” he said, but Andy was still fixated on Patrick. The skin on his neck looked strange, mottled somehow. He felt a growing sense of fear, accompanied by the insufferable urge to honk again.

            Making faces the whole time, Patrick slowly pulled off his hoodie, and the skin of his arms was the same, strange texture as his neck. He had his hand on the button of his jeans when he lurched forward, his eyes bulging.

            Patrick opened his mouth, but did not manage to say anything. Joe revved the engine, but too late.

            Patrick’s face extended, his arms burst wide, scraps of blue t-shirt falling, as Joe predicted, to the floor of the car. He was growing and changing, too fast and blurry for Andy to see, and then thick and leathery wings were filling up the car on every side and everyone was screaming.

            The car swung violently to the right, tipping sideways and nearly falling as they drove all the way off the shoulder and into a ditch. The unearthly shrieking in the car filled Andy with a fear that cut him straight to the bone, and the second the car stopped, Andy kicked out the front windshield with his hind-legs.

            Joe and Pete were still screaming, but Andy’s human brain was far behind his deer brain. There was a predator, he was running away from it.

            Andy was far into the trees before he could no longer hear the sound of the pterodactyl screeching behind him.

***

            Joe kind of hated the sound of his own screaming. It was, however, hard to stop, given that he was trapped in a crashed car with a thirteen-year-old and an enormous winged dinosaur. So, really, it was stupid for him to still be thinking about how damn high his voice sounded and how weird the space between his legs felt. And yet.

            But just because he was - well, not really a girl, he didn’t feel like a girl whether he had boobs or not - not quite himself, it didn’t mean he wasn’t a werewolf. Once he remembered that, he ripped the driver’s side door clean off, climbing out of the car. He yanked Pete’s door open as well and pulled the kid (kid!) out. Pete was still screaming as Joe threw him down onto the grass.

            The dinosaur who was Patrick was still trapped in the car, screeching at a horrifically high pitch. Joe realized that there was a real chance that dinosaur Patrick couldn’t actually get out of the car, which sounded like an unmitigated disaster. Pete was still screaming, still sprawled out on the ground, and the dinosaur was flapping his wings as best he could. His wings were, notably, too big for the car, but they were flailing as best they could. Being in a space that confined couldn’t be comfortable for him. Joe didn’t really know how he could help the enormous dinosaur out of the car, but he didn’t want Patrick to injure himself.

            “Okay,” Joe said. “Okay. Pete?”

            Pete stopped screaming, though he was still breathing heavy. Also, yanking a pair of too-big jeans back up on his waist.

            “We need to get Patrick out of the car,” Joe said. Pete looked at the screeching pterodactyl, then back at Joe and shook his head.

            “I’ll do it myself then!” Joe said. His hair hadn’t gotten longer when he changed, but it seemed to hang in his face differently. He blew a lock out of his eyes, squared his smaller than usual shoulders, and walked back up to the car.

            “Patrick!” Joe shouted.

            The pterodactyl turned its head to Joe, beak wide open like he was going to swallow Joe whole. Joe didn’t lurch backwards, but swallowed and stuck his hand out.

            “Easy, easy buddy,” Joe said. The pterodactyl tossed his head back and let out another cry. Joe winced, but Patrick stilled.

            “Can you stretch one wing out to me?” Joe asked. The pterodactyl had very blue eyes for a prehistoric reptile, and Joe thought he looked like he could understand him. Slowly, he started to extend one wing. The wing caught against the headrest, and he let out a cry, retracting his wing almost at once.

            “Yeah, okay, I know,” Joe said. “But it’s not gonna get any better until you get out of the car.”

            Patrick flapped his wings again, but they just kept beating against the insides of the car. Joe could smell blood as they caught against the window Andy broke, and Patrick screeched again. Joe winced.

            “Yeah, that looks like it hurts, okay, just try and stay still for me?”

            Joe held up one finger in front of the dinosaur, then ran back over to where he left Pete.

            “Hey, Pete, your car,” Joe said. “Um. How attached are you to your car?”

            “My car?” Pete asked. “Very!”

            “Yeah, okay, fair enough, but your boyfriend is trapped in there and he’s kind of hurt, so if you give me permission to destroy your car, I can help him.”

            Pete made a face and looked over at the car. Patrick shrieked again.

            “What exactly are you going to do to my car?” Pete asked.

            “Pete!” Joe said.

            “Yeah, get him out,” Pete said. Joe bounded back to the car and, summoning as much strength as he could, ripped through the fiberglass body panels until the whole side of the car was open and exposed. The pterodactyl started moving towards him, still screeching, but Joe shook his head.

            “No, no, buddy, stay put for another second,” Joe said. He his swept hair out of his eyes again - had his eyelashes gotten longer? - and ripped the driver’s seat clean out of the car. Joe took a step back and gave Patrick a hopeful smile.

            “Go for it,” Joe said. Patrick’s wings beat against the inside of the car, but he did manage to crawl his way out. He was moving kind of oddly, his gait hunched forward with one step and normal with the next, and little droplets of blood trickled off the leathery edges of his wings, spattering against the ground.

            Joe leaned forward, praying that the dinosaur was more Patrick than instinct-driven predator. The pterodactyl made a clicking noise, like a warning, but Joe moved forward and leaned lower, slow as he could. Patrick appeared to be standing on one leg, the other bent up beneath him, and _oh_ , his leg was still broken, but had split out of the cast.

            “Aw, buddy,” Joe said, his voice sounding maternal, even to his own ears. He reached up and stroked Patrick’s beak, and Patrick made a sad, chirrupping sort of noise in the back of his throat. “I’m not even gonna say I told you so about the clothes. The whole car was too small for you, huh?”

            Patrick stretched out his wings in response, and Joe fought the nauseous sense of fear that rose up in his stomach. The massive wingspan was significantly longer than the car, the height nearly as tall as Joe when he stood up.

            “All right,” Joe said, sucking in a deep breath. “Patrick, stay still, and I’m gonna try and splint your leg.”

            Patrick squawked, but Joe just rolled his eyes as he crawled down under the dinosaur. He made to pull his shirt off, but stopped. Joe went shirtless all the time due to the workout of playing onstage, turning into a wolf, and general Pete Wentz-related shenanigans. No big deal. He wasn’t body-conscious like Patrick. And he certainly supported the right for women to go topless. The fact that men could and women couldn’t was sexist, and yet. He felt weird about Pete and Patrick seeing his boobs, even if he didn’t have them half an hour ago.

            His moment of hesitation didn’t last long. Joe decided he was being stupid, and he wormed his way out of a Metallica shirt that was now too big in his shoulders and too tight in his chest. Getting it off was actually shockingly difficult, his breasts catching on the material and refusing to let go.

            He did get it off, and from there ripped it to strips and set about tying up the pterodactyl’s leg. Patrick shrieked when Joe pulled the fabric taut, but Joe just winced and kept going. Once his leg was fully wrapped in black fabric and mostly straight, Joe pulled back from him, smiling hopefully up at Patrick.

            “All better?” he asked.

            Patrick made another clicking noise, though Joe thought this time it might be a noise of appreciation.

            “Good,” Joe said. “Now, Pete, we should-”

            “Oh my God!” Pete shouted, covering his eyes. “You can’t just - you’re naked!”

            “I’m shirtless!” Joe said. The hesitation from before came back with a vengeance, and he threw one arm over his chest, a censor bar over his nipples. “It’s not like it’s a big deal!”

            But Pete was bright red, alternating between staring directly at Joe’s chest and looking anywhere else. Joe felt heat rise in his cheeks too and he looked away from Pete.

            “I will go easy on you because you’re thirteen and don’t have a history book to hold in front of your dick,” Joe said. “But they’re just tits. You’ve seen plenty in your life, okay?”

            “It’s been a while,” Pete said, and God, but that sounded horrible out of a thirteen year old’s mouth.

            “Don’t be a pervert,” Joe suggested. “And if it bothers you so much, give me your shirt.”  
            “No!” Pete shouted, crossing his arms. Joe rolled his eyes again.

            “Fine! Like I was saying, we should figure this out. I’ll go back to the coffee shop and demand an antidote. Pete, you round up Andy-”

            “No way.”

            “Oh for fuck’s sake, were you just, like, an awful child?” Joe asked. “We don’t have time to argue this, dude. You get the scared deer from the forest, Patrick, you stay put, and I’ll get us fixed.”

            “I’m not just wandering into the forest,” Pete said. “Besides, that deer is probably way faster than me. No way I’ll catch up to Andy. You’re the fast one.”

            “Yes, but I, incidentally, am still capable of driving a car. Even if your picture matched the license, I don’t think your feet can reach the pedals right now.”

            “What car?” Pete asked. “You ripped mine to pieces and you - girls can’t just go around shirtless.”

            “Which is totally sexist!” Joe said. “Ugh, just- wait here.”

            Joe went back to the car, realizing that it was dinging because all the doors were open and it was still in drive. He quickly pulled the key from the ignition and dug around the remains of the backseat until he found the baggy Clandestine hoodie that Patrick had taken off before turning into a dinosaur. He zipped it up over his bare chest and glanced at himself in the side mirror.

            He looked - well, actually, he looked kind of hot. He had soft eyes, round and the perfect shade of blue for an innocent looking girl. His eyelashes were longer, just as he had suspected, but his hair was the same, and he didn’t seem to be any shorter. His shoes were loose on his feet, and the waistband of his jeans was digging way too tight against his curvy hips, but in spite of all this and the nonexistent facial hair, Joe still looked like himself. Just, well, a version of himself he could jack-off to later, if he was so inclined.

            He also noticed that he needed a bra rather badly, and his back kind of hurt, but hopefully they would get it fixed before he had to worry about that. He had no idea how bra sizing worked, and no desire to find out.

            After a tiny bit of preening, which he stopped as soon as Patrick made a chirping noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter, he examined the car. It wasn’t a smoldering wreck, it was just missing some doors, the windshield, the driver’s seat that he had ripped out, and the entire side panel. Nothing he couldn’t handle, really. It would’ve been hard for a human to get it back on the road, but he wasn’t human.

            “I can drive this,” he said, half to Pete and half to himself. “No big deal. All right, the plan is still the plan. I’m going to the coffee shop and I’ll be back in a couple hours. Pete, you’re in charge.”

            The dinosaur made an affronted noise, and Joe shrugged.

            “Sorry, Patrick,” he said. “Pete, find Bambi and don’t let our pterodactyl fly away.”

            “He’s not even a pterodactyl,” Pete said. “I had a dinosaur phase when I was six. Pterodactyls have teeth, and they don’t get that big.”

            Joe glanced at Patrick’s beak. Sure enough, no teeth, though he didn’t want to get closer to inspect it.

            “So, what kind of dinosaur is he?” Joe asked.

            “I think he’s a pteranodon,” Pete said. “Pteranodons are big. They’re also not dinosaurs.”

            “Fine, your boyfriend the prehistoric flying reptile,” Joe said. “Don’t let him fly away. I will be back.”

            It took him a minute to push the car up onto the shoulder of the road again. Back on the highway with other cars speeding by, it looked much worse than it had. It was relatively clean and intact for a wreck, but on the road, well. It was missing the whole left side, and though Joe had stuck the seat back in, it was pretty precarious. It didn’t look at all like a functioning car, and if he ran into a cop, he was going to be screwed. But Joe didn’t have a lot of other options, and maybe he would stumble into a car rental place in time to get a vehicle that hadn’t been trashed by a deer, a werewolf, and a dinosaur.

            “Be careful!” he shouted out the open door, and peeled off down the road.

            Whether due to Joe’s prayers or simple luck, he made it back to Air People in forty five minutes without getting pulled over once. He got a lot of weird looks, but he didn’t get arrested, and that was a win for him.

            After parking, Joe sprinted the distance from the car to the coffee shop, and had his gun aimed at the barista by the time he turned around. He was having a bad day and wasn’t in the mood to be caught off guard by taking the time to play nice.

            “Oh,” the barista said, staring down at the pistol. He set down the French press he had been washing, and held his hands up. “Are you robbing us?”  
            “No,” Joe said. “I’m demanding answers right the fuck now as to why one of my best friends just turned into a pteranodon!”

            Ainsel, according to his nametag, just giggled. He went back to washing some of the dishes, and Joe noticed that the shop patrons went back to drinking their coffee like he wasn’t there, like he wasn’t pointing a gun at a worker. It was a little irritating.

            “The one who got the special, right?” he said. “Well, what did he expect, ordering something like that?”

            “What does that even mean?” Joe asked. “Wait, back up. So, you admit it was your coffee that transformed us into - various things?”

            “Yes,” Ainsel said. “Why are you so upset about it?”

            “Because I didn’t want to grow tits today!” Joe said. “We’re kind of busy? Who would want this?”

            “That’s what this place is for,” Ainsel said. “If you didn’t want to transform, you shouldn’t have ordered anything.”

            “I’m… so fucking lost,” Joe said.

            “Look, you came to the changeling coffee shop, you ordered the coffee, and you changed. That’s how all this works,” Ainsel said.

            “But we didn’t know it was going to change us!” Joe said. “Why - why wasn’t there a warning? What if random people just walk in here? How do you explain this to humans going around and turning into dinosaurs all over the place?!”

            “People can only come in here if they know what they’re walking into,” Ainsel said, like it was obvious.

            “We didn’t!” Joe said. “This place just looks like a coffee shop! How the hell would we have known what this is?”

            “Because it’s impossible to even see this shop unless someone tells you about it, or you already know about it,” Ainsel said. He paused in the middle of drying a mug, looking off into the middle distance. “Or if you’re fae. But fae know better than to just accept food or drink without asking about it first.”

            “But we could see it, and we assumed it was an ordinary coffee shop, and-!” Joe stopped mid-rant, thinking about the morning. It had been, he realized, Pete who noticed the shop, the one who pointed it out to the rest of them. And Pete wasn’t exactly traditional when it came to fae teachings.

            Joe stood at the counter, breathing heavy, and lowered his gun, grimacing as he realized the problem. Ainsel made a sympathetic noise.

            “I’m terribly sorry about this little mix-up,” he said. “I can get you four a refund, if you like.”

            “I don’t want a refund!” Joe said. “Look, I’m sorry for losing my temper. Just- just tell me how we can get back to normal.”

            “Oh, that’s easy,” Ainsel said, and Joe felt a premature sense of relief wash over him. “Just wait.”

            The pleasant feeling of relief was gone.

            “Wait?” Joe repeated. “How long do we wait?”

            “Well, that depends on the size of the drink, the weight of the person in question, and their caffeine tolerance,” Ainsel said. “But the average wait time is 24 hours after the effects kick in.”

            “You have got to be fucking with me,” Joe said. “Ainsel, you’re killing me here. 24 hours?”

            “Depending,” Ainsel said. “Definitely no more than 36 hours, unless you gave an extra large to a kid.”

            “But we have to do other stuff! We don’t really have the time to wait 36 hours for our singer to have, you know, a human voice. Can we just drink other stuff that changes us back?”

            “Doesn’t work like that,” Ainsel said. “Of course, you can stack drink effects on top of each other. For example, if you also drank the vegan forest latte, you would retain the, ah, feminine appearance, and grow some deer-like features on top of that. But there’s nothing that negates what you already drank.”

            “But- look, we’re in the middle of something,” Joe said. “And as soon as it’s over, we have to go back to recording! And, I reiterate, we can’t do that if our singer is a dinosaur.”

            “I don’t think pteranodons are actually categorized as dinosaurs,” Ainsel said.

            “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Joe said. “Do you have, I don’t know, anything helpful to tell me? Did you do this to get to Pete? Are you in Unseelie court or something?”

            “I’m not even fae, dude,” Ainsel said. He pointed at his nametag. “I just work here for, you know, fun. And it’s just a coffee shop.”

            “Right,” Joe said sourly. “Well, thanks for nothing, I suppose.” He adjusted his boobs with his arm, noting that his back hurt the longer he stayed standing.

            “I think there’s a Victoria’s Secret in the mall across the way,” Ainsel said.

            “Oh, fuck off!” Joe said. “Girls don’t have to wear bras.”

            “No, but it’s more comfortable, in my experience,” Ainsel said. “Also, you’re, um. Do you call it ‘well-endowed’ on a girl?”

            “No, you don’t!” Joe said. While he stuffed his pistol back in its holster, Ainsel kept up cheerful conversation, like Joe wasn’t in the mood to punch him in the face.

            “The redhead, the one who ordered the vegan latte? He was cute. Could you give him my number?”

            “He’s straight,” Joe said. When he looked up, Ainsel was holding out a large white bag spotted with grease.

            “I put some pastries in here,” he said. “For your troubles. Nothing with any magical properties, I promise.”

            “Thanks,” Joe said grudgingly, and he took the bag and stormed out of the shop. He sat behind the wheel of the trashed car for a while, not turning the key in the engine. He looked over at the mall behind him, and then down at his chest. Assuming Ainsel was right and there was nothing they could do for a straight 24 hours…

            Joe pulled into the mall parking lot before he could psych himself out, and tried to console himself with the knowledge that, at the very least, Pete wasn’t there to laugh it up while Joe went bra shopping. He dug a pair of sunglasses out of the glovebox - an appropriately feminine looking pair of Pete’s - and pulled his hood up before going in. It wasn’t exactly covert, but it was better than someone getting a picture of a girl who looked _exactly like that Fall Out Boy guy!_

            Joe walked right past the Victoria’s Secret, not really wanting to drop fifty dollars on a flimsy pink bra he would only (hopefully) wear once. He made for a department store instead, and called his girlfriend once he was pretty sure he was alone in the lingerie department.

            “Hey, baby,” he said, trying to force his voice lower to little effect. “Um, if I sent you a topless picture, do you think you could guess the boob size of a girl?”

            There was silence on the other end for a long time.

            “Why?” Marie asked. It was only one syllable, but it was infused with a lot of emotion.

            “Because I drank gender-swap coffee on accident and my back hurts and I need a bra,” Joe said. “No I’m not lying, no I’m not joking, please don’t laugh at me.”

            To Marie’s credit, she did not laugh.

            “I don’t think I could size you from a picture,” she said. “But based on the size of your chest and the fact that you said your back hurts… try a 38D. If the band is too loose, move down a number size. If the cup is too big, move down a cup size. If you’re quad-boobing, move up a cup size-”

            “Quad-boob?”

            “Trust me, you’ll know it if you see it. And if you can’t hook it, move up a band size. You’re not on your period, right? Because I can’t teach you how to put a tampon in all the way from New York.”

            Joe couldn’t tell if she was making fun of him or not, but he was too grateful and in too much of a hurry to care.

            “Thanks, sweetie,” he said. “Love you, I’ll tell you all about it when it’s over.”

            “Love you too!” she said as he hung up.

            Joe tried on a few sizes, staring at himself doubtfully in the mirror with each one. Everything he tried on seemed to either do nothing or cling so tight to his skin that it felt hard to breathe, but he bought a few different sizes, because if girls could do it all the time, he could too. Then, remembering Patrick’s destroyed clothes and feeling the awful dig of his own waistband, Joe bought more clothes as well. Girl-shaped jeans and a plain shirt that fit his body, new jeans and a t-shirt for Patrick, and smaller clothes for Pete, because Joe was feeling particularly benevolent. And, as a last thought, he also got himself smaller shoes. Pete could go barefoot.

            He changed in the mall bathroom, then went back into the parking lot. He was on his way back to the car when he caught sight of a couple of girls walking towards a beat up old car. Joe made a face, thinking about how cruel his idea was, but also the relative odds of getting pulled over in half a car. He told himself not to feel too guilty since they didn’t have much of a choice, then approached the girls.

            “Hey,” he said, still wincing at the sound of his voice, ticked up even higher with stress. “Are you going anywhere important for the rest of the day?”

            The girls looked at each other, then back at him.

            “Not really,” one said. “We’re just hanging out.”

            “Brilliant,” Joe said. He pulled his phone out and handed it to one of the girls.

            “Put in your contact information,” he ordered, letting his voice slip into dominance, the alpha voice he never got a chance to use. “And I will call you as soon as I’m done. Give me your car keys.”

            Both of their faces were slack as one of them handed him the keys and the other typed in all her info. Joe took the keys and his phone, nodded at them, and drove off in their car. Maybe, when they sorted this all out, there would even be enough of a car left for Pete to take into a shop whenever they came back this way.

            It took only half an hour to drive back, as Joe cared less than ever about getting caught speeding, and in no time he was able to ease the car over onto the shoulder where he could see the skids of their earlier wreck. Pete and Andy were sitting on the grass, looking rather lost, but the pteranodon was nowhere to be seen.

            “You didn’t lose Patrick, did you?” Joe asked by way of greeting. Pete made a face of abject betrayal at the sight of him, and Joe somehow held back laughter at the sight of the indignant teenager.

            “You stopped to go shopping?” Pete said. “And you lost my car?”

            “I didn’t lose your car, I ditched it for something driveable,” Joe said. “And yeah, I went shopping. Got you some stuff from Gap Kids; you’re welcome.” He turned to face Andy, who was leaned all the way away, looking skittish. “I see you’re back.”

            “Not my idea,” Andy said, and Joe believed it. In spite of the enormous, rather intimidating antlers, Andy’s eyes were side and fearful, and he kept looking from side to side and pawing his hooves against the dirt. “Pete said I had to come out of the forest.”

            “Well, Pete was right,” Joe said. “We’ve got a mission to finish, and -”

            “So do you know how to fix it?” Pete demanded. Joe closed his eyes, leaned back against the car, and sighed.

            “We can’t,” he said. “According to the guy at the coffee shop it’ll wear off in 24 hours.”

            “24 hours?!” Pete and Andy shouted it back at Joe in unison, and Joe winced.

            “Look, I’m not any happier about this than you are,” he said. “But there’s nothing we can do but wait. Now, where’s Patrick?”

            “He flew off into the woods,” Pete said, gesturing behind him. “I figured someone on the road might see a prehistoric reptile and get freaked out. It worked out okay. That was what finally scared Andy out of the woods.”

            Andy made an upset noise, though Joe wasn’t sure if it was embarrassed or afraid.

            “You see this however you like it,” he grumbled. “I’m a prey animal, okay? I have instincts! That’s a million year old predator! I don’t want to be anywhere near him.”

            “Oh, how the tables turn,” Joe said under his breath. “Right, well, we still have the werewolf problem.”

            “You expect us to take care of it like this?” Pete asked. “I’m going through puberty, dude. Again, I might add. I can’t fight anything. My acne is so bad that my face hurts and I’m kind of in the mood to scream or drive nails into my head.”

            “Well, at least you’re not melodramatic,” Joe said.

            “Not funny,” Pete said.

            “And of course we still have to take care of it, Pete! People are dying, and if I have to go alone I will, but I would prefer it if we all stick together.”

            The last few words stuck in Joe’s throat. The issue of _sticking together_ had rapidly become the bane of their band’s existence, but what could he do? Suggest they split up and take care of it on their own? Get himself taken by the egrigors? He really, really, really didn’t want to think about what they would do to him - or how their plans might change based on the way his body was at the moment.

            Luckily, Pete didn’t complain any further. He just huffed.

            “What kind of clothes did you buy?” he asked, and Joe handed him the bag.

            While Pete changed in the car, Joe flopped down on the grass next to Andy. Andy jumped a little, then settled back down. Joe tried not to stare, but it was hard not to get fixated on the black shine of Andy’s nose or the solid hooves at the end of his arm.

            “This is… super weird,” Joe said. Andy looked at him, eyebrows raised.

            “Yeah, tell me about it,” Andy said. “You’re, you know…”

            “Kinda hot?” Joe guessed.

            “Well, yeah,” Andy said.

            “I know,” Joe said. “It’s weird. I shouldn’t be into myself, and yet.”

            “I shouldn’t be into you,” Andy said.

            “Careful, there,” Joe said. “We don’t want the band to pair off like gay Noah’s Ark. One pair of us is weird. Two is just… unnatural.”

            “That’s homophobic!” Pete called from the car.

            “Man,” Joe said, “Why is it always the three of us getting stuck together. We need Patrick back. Hey, Patrick!” he shouted towards the forest.

            “Oh, don’t call him over!” Andy pleaded. “Don’t, don’t, he’s a predator he could kill me and eat me-”

            “He’s vegetarian,” Joe said.

            “The dinosaur isn’t!”

            “Pteranodons aren’t actually dinosaurs,” Joe said. Andy honked at him. From somewhere in the distance, Joe heard what sounded like the rustling of enormous wings.

            “Look, just be cool, okay?” he said. Andy’s eyes were wide and disbelieving.

            “Be cool? Be cool? You want me to be cool?! That thing is going to eat me-”

            “He is not going to eat you!”

            “He’ll spit out my bones and pick his teeth with my antlers-”

            “He doesn’t have teeth!”

            “And then he’ll-”

            Andy’s hysteria was cut off with the loud sound of screeching from overhead. Joe grabbed the collar of Andy’s shirt before he could run away again. Although Andy let out a honk of frustration, he stayed still, albeit trembling a little as Patrick swooped down and landed a few yards away with a soft thud.

            “Hey, dude,” Joe said. Patrick squawked, shook out his wings, and then tucked them in by his side.

            “Okay, Pete, you dressed yet?” Joe asked. Pete stumbled out of the car, the new clothes not fitting perfectly, but better than what he had been wearing.

            “What’s the other outfit for?” Pete asked. He sounded petulant, though that could just be a side effect of being thirteen.

            “For Patrick, when he turns back,” Joe said. Pete gave Joe an odd look, somewhere between gratitude and pride, but Joe pretended he couldn’t see him. He wasn’t the best friend or pack leader in the world, but he could still try to take care of his friends. But the fact that his efforts surprised Pete just served to make Joe feel even more desolate.

“Well, great, everyone’s as dressed as they can be. We still need to get to Napa to solve this werewolf thing, but Patrick, you are not going to fit in the car.”

            Joe wasn’t sure how the not-a-dinosaur managed to look indignant, but he did.

            “Remember what happened to the last car?” Joe asked. “Right. So, what I’m thinking is - Patrick, how fast do you think you can you fly?”

            Within the hour, they were back on the road. In spite of Pete’s protests that it was “beyond insanely risky” to have Patrick flying over a major highway, Joe could only think of one way to get them all across the state within the next few hours, and that was for Patrick to fly above them and follow the car. Nobody liked it much, except for Andy, who made it abundantly clear that he much preferred to have a lot of space between him and the pteranodon. Once they were not too far outside of Napa, Joe pulled over again, someplace Patrick could land without drawing attention to himself.

            Joe got out of the car, all but dragging Andy behind him. The pteranodon was sitting very attentively, rather like a dog waiting for a treat. Pete scrambled out of the car behind them and ran over to Patrick. He reached up to pet Patrick’s beak, but instead Patrick leaned down and licked all the way up Pete’s body with his enormous tongue. Pete’s excited smile turned immediately into a grimace.

            “Ew,” he said, wiping his shirt, though it wasn’t even wet looking. “Patrick, that’s super gross.”

            Patrick let out a small noise, then settled in closer to the ground.

            “Anyway, lovebirds,” Joe said. “Andy, you’re not gonna like part two of the plan.”

            “What’s part two?” Andy whined.

            “You stay with Patrick while Pete and I go into town and try to figure out where the werewolf set up camp.”

            “Absolutely not.”

            Patrick screeched, indignant again. Pete was making a face too.

            “I don’t like it,” Pete said. His voice cracked a little, and Joe still did not laugh, because he was a good friend.

            “Well, we shouldn’t go off on our own, and you and I still look like human beings,” Joe said. “You could be my… little brother, if anyone asked.” He made a sour face even as he was talking, but nothing compared to the full on scowl Pete had.

            “Look, we have to do research, and we can’t do it with a dinosaur,” Joe said. Pete made to open his mouth, and Joe added “Yes, I know pteranodons aren’t dinosaurs. Rudolph the Vegan Reindeer here will cause almost as much trouble.”

            “I really object to the stupid deer nicknames,” Andy said.

            “Of course, you could always stay with them again,” Joe said to Pete. “But as I’m the only one who can drive and talk to people…”

            “Fine!” Pete said. “I’ll come with you. Andy, Patrick, watch out for each other.”

            “But!” Andy said. He didn’t seem to have an explanation or a reason for his protest; just the word ‘but’.

            Patrick settled down on the ground, tucking his head down by his feet. Up close, Joe noticed with a start, he could still see the faint scarred words on Patrick’s back, so he turned away quickly.

            “We’ll be back soon,” Joe promised Andy. He got back in the car, Pete joining him in the passenger seat.

            Joe was sure they had been to Napa before on some tour or another, but for the life of him he couldn’t recall it. The town felt less congested than LA, though it wasn’t so small that a few maulings and killings would send the place into an uproar. Sometimes, Joe thought wistfully, small towns were best for investigations.

            On the bright side of things, a thirteen year old Pete definitely wasn’t going to get noticed by any Fall Out Boy fans. None of them were going to have to worry about paparazzi while they were just trying to save the day.

            Joe tried to go up to a few people in the town, but it was hard to open a conversation with “what do you know about the recent murders around here?” and get people to actually share what they knew. He made some vague attempt at fluttering his eyelashes at people, but he felt silly doing that.

            “How do you usually get information?” Joe asked Pete eventually. His feet hurt, the sun was starting to sink in the sky, and he just wanted to go home and sleep off his boobs like a bad hangover.

            “Usually I look hot,” Pete said sourly. “And I flirt with a girl until she tells me something. But I don’t look all that attractive right now.”

            “I don’t know how to flirt with guys,” Joe said.

            “You do the same thing as with girls,” Pete said.

            “I don’t really know how to flirt,” Joe admitted. “I’ve kind of been with the same person my whole life.”

            “I suppose we could set someone up as bait,” Pete said, looking morose. “But the only one of us who smells human… isn’t.”

            “Okay,” Jos said. “Plan B. I’m gonna turn into a wolf and see if I can smell the bastard out. Pete, stay with my clothes and see if someone will talk to you.”

            “What happened to not splitting up?!” Pete cried.

            “I’ll be right back,” Joe promised. He ducked into a side alley and shifted, shaking off the girl clothes, even though the bra put up a fight. He shook out his fur, and looked up to see Pete frowning down at him.

            “You look weird,” Pete said bluntly. Joe felt weird too, violently aware in this form as well that his dick was very much not there. But he was still a wolf, still himself, and he nudged Pete once before bounding off through the back of the alley, careful to avoid any humans who would be less than happy to see a wild animal roaming around their city.

            He snuck through alleys and slunk down streets that looked empty until he came out to an open field, unsure of how to go about doing this. It might be easier to track the creature at night, but he wanted them to have some sort of plan before it got dark out.

            If nothing else, Joe thought while he ran a lap around the town, it felt better to be able to _run_ , to use his muscles and feel a bit more like himself, even he didn’t have a dick at the moment. He decided to circle the city to see if he came across any trails, and then go and meet up with Pete again.

            Then, while he was crouched in a ditch by the side of the road, waiting for a break in the cars to dart across, the wind shifted. Joe inhaled the sharp, coppery smell of blood, and snapped his head around to face a dark forest.

            It was always a fucking forest.  

            Joe glanced over his shoulder, figured that Pete could take care of himself even if he looked like a child. (He had taken care of himself while acting like one for most of his life, Joe thought to himself.) He then ran into the trees, keeping his nose to the ground for another whiff of blood.

            The scent, as it turned out, wasn’t hard to follow. Either it wasn’t deep in the trees, or there was a lot of it. Less than a minute of running gave him the answer. There was freshly turned earth next to a tree. Joe dug at the loose soil until he hit something firm like a tree root, but one that moved with his touch. He was pretty sure he knew what it was before he looked.

            Down under the ground there was a pile of bones and hair and gristle, the bones clean but fresh and white. Some of the surrounding soil was darker, thick with the metallic smell of blood. Joe looked around and saw a great deal of upturned earth all around him. A lot of human remains.

            And to think, they were basing their ideas on this wolf problem off the official body count. Still staring in horror at the makeshift cemetery, Joe felt a pang of distress from Pete through the bond, and then held still for a moment while that pang turned into a consistent throb of some indiscernible negative emotion. Joe kicked dirt back over the graves, and, not for the first time, cursed his stupid powers for not being any more specific.

            Joe went back to Pete as quickly as he could without attracting attention, yet again slinking through alleys and waiting to dart across roads. When he found Pete, still lurking in the shadows of the alley, Joe nudged him with his nose till he turned around, then shifted back. He was used to the sensation of his bones distorting, stretching themselves out while Joe grew again to human size, but this time as he transformed he was still mesmerized with his chest. His breasts grew from nothing until they hung down against his ribs. Joe had spent his whole life seeing boobs as sexy, and the uncomfortable feeling of them on his chest was kind of killing that.

            “Are you okay?” he asked, trying to jump into the odd-fitting clothes as fast as possible.

            “Not even a little,” Pete said. “But you can go first.”

            “Well, I didn’t find a wolf, but I found a burial ground,” Joe said. “Just bones, but they’re all bloody and fresh. And lots of them. Whatever we’re hunting, it’s got a regular little hideout in the woods, and it kills way more than we think it does. What’d you learn?”

            “Ashley called,” Pete said. Joe froze, his jeans only on one leg.

            “And?”

            “And what do you think?” Pete asked, his voice way too exhausted and bitter for a voice his age. Joe jumped the rest of the way into his jeans and braced for the worst. “She’s in labor. Like, right now.”

            “Wait, that’s good news, isn’t it?” Joe asked.

            Pete turned to him. He was seething.

            “She’s giving birth right now, and I’m supposed to be there, but instead we’re in Napa and I’m a child and Patrick’s a pteranodon! That’s not good news! I’m about to miss the birth of my son!”

            Joe made a face.

            “Well,” he reasoned. “It probably would’ve been awkward watching her give birth? Like, staring at your ex’s vagina for a few hours doesn’t seem like the ideal-”

            Pete interrupted Joe by, yet again, punching him in the face.

            “For fuck’s sake, will you stop doing that?!” Joe shouted. “I might have deserved it last time, but-”

            That time, Joe cut himself off. They were in dangerous territory, threatening to talk about subjects that they had quietly agreed to ignore. All of a sudden, being alone with Pete for this part of the mission felt unbearably awkward.

            “Yeah, you did,” Pete said. “And you’re being a douchebag all the time, if you haven’t noticed. Having the egrigors around is hard on everyone, and you’re making it worse.”

            Joe clenched his fists at his sides. He couldn’t hit a kid, even if the kid was Pete. He probably wouldn’t even hit adult Pete if he could avoid it, what with the super strength and all. Even though he really wanted to.

            “I’m not trying to make it worse,” he said, enunciating each word slowly. He also noticed, as he spoke, that he was using a mom voice. He sounded like his mother, which was almost weird enough to calm him down. “And, while we’re on the subject, have you considered that it sucks for me too?”

            “Oh, it sucks for you?” Pete’s voice cracked. “My life is falling apart, and-”

            “Your life is falling apart?” Joe demanded. “I’m the one who’s on the fucking chopping block! They threatened to take me next! I’m stressed, and I’m still trying to help, and this isn’t my fault!”

            Pete’s face fell. Tears pooled up in his eyes all at once, and Joe belatedly realized how his words sounded.

            “Fuck, dude,” Joe knelt down. “It’s not your fault either.”

            “They said,” Pete was sniffling, his hands shaking, “said it was for me. Because of me. I don’t want people to get hurt, I didn’t want-”

            “Hey, dude.” Joe pulled Pete into a hug. “It’s okay. We’re not exactly dealing with a normal situation here. We don’t - okay, they said this is about you, but we don’t know what made them. This isn’t your fault. It’s them, and their creator, and that’s it. Not you, not me, just them. Fuck, man, they probably want us to go around blaming each other. If nothing else, we’ve gotta keep being nice to each other to spite those bastards.”

            Pete laughed, just a tiny little bit. Maybe it was the fact that he was now a full foot shorter than Joe and had a soft face, or the teenage hormones that made him quick to cry, but something in the vulnerability was getting to Joe. He realized all of a sudden how much of the past few months Pete had spent miserable, and he felt overwhelmingly guilty.

            “And, um,” Joe stopped, unable to get the words out. Pete looked up at him, his eyes still embarrassingly watery. “I’m sorry. You know, for what I said. You’re not weak, either of you.”

            “Well, we can’t all rip apart cars with our bare hands,” Pete said with a shrug. “Thanks. Sorry for punching you. The first time.”

            “But not the second time?” Joe guessed.

            “Not the second time,” Pete agreed.

            “Right, well, you can apologize when we take down the monster of the week and get you back to LA for your son’s birth,” Joe said. “And if that’s the plan, we’d better get moving.”

***

            Patrick was hungry.

            Of all the sensations he was feeling, hunger was by far the most mundane. There was, of course, the fact that his arms had been replaced by fifteen-foot-long leathery wings, the fact that his now-short legs ended in talons, that his mouth had been replaced with an enormous beak, and the strain in his back from flying all the way across California. He had shed his human body for the physical form of a long extinct flying reptile, and he knew he was carnivorous and deadly. He had experienced the unbridled joy of flying, and all in all, he was having one of the weirdest days of his life.

            But he was still hungry, and he didn’t know how to convey this to someone who could get him food. Besides, he was fairly certain if he did manage to tell Andy that he was hungry, the half-deer would just bolt, and then Joe and Pete would be mad at Patrick for scaring him.

            The whole “prey-animal-instinct” thing was, in Patrick’s opinion, totally ridiculous. He was clearly responding to what his band was saying, so it wasn’t like he was some instinct-driven monster. He was still Patrick, just a little more durable and a lot less verbal. It wasn’t like he ran screaming every time Andy showed his canine teeth, even though Andy was a vampire, which was a natural predator to a human.

            Patrick turned to Andy and made a noise that was supposed to convey: “ _The guys have been gone for a while, and I’m getting pretty hungry. Should we go check on them and maybe see if we can get me a few pounds of ground beef from the local grocery store?_ ”

            It came out something like “CREEEEEE-AHK!”

            Andy jumped a few feet back, trembling from hooves to antlers as he eyed Patrick. He honked indignantly before shaking himself out.

            “Don’t _do_ that!” he said. “You’re so loud.”

            Patrick made a low, clicking noise of annoyance. It wasn’t his fault that no one else spoke pteranodon. Or, you know, whatever he was. He was listening to the whole dinosaur argument, but as far as Patrick was concerned, it didn’t matter much. He looked like an animatronic from Jurassic Park and could fly, which was what really mattered. And he was still hungry, and worried, and bored.

            “Where are they?” Andy asked aloud, and Patrick exaggeratedly bobbed his head up and down in the hopes that it would look like a nod. Andy glanced at him and made a face.

            “Are you… worried too?” he guessed. Patrick bobbed his head again, feeling stupid, but Andy’s face cleared like he finally understood.

            “I guess they can take care of themselves,” Andy said. “I just don’t like it. I want to go home and sleep off these antlers like a bad hangover.”

            Patrick did his best to make a chittering noise that wasn’t too loud, but still conveyed questioning. Andy snorted.

            “I have drank before, you know.”

            Jesus, but Patrick wanted to talk. Sure, he knew Andy drank as a kid, but how many thirteen year olds drank so much that they had to sleep off their hangovers? He wanted to hear the story, to have something to distract him from both mind-numbing boredom and intense hunger. But he was pretty sure he couldn’t mime “tell me a story” with his pteranodon body.

            Instead, he slowly settled down into the grass in a position that sort of mimicked laying down. He rolled his eyes over to look at Andy and slowly, still skittish, Andy eased himself down into a sitting position.

            “You’re really not going to eat me?” Andy asked. Patrick did his best to make a sound that sounded like a snort, and Andy seemed to get the gist of it.

            They sat largely in silence for a while after that before Joe and Pete showed up again, both of them looking worse for wear. Pete’s eyes were red-rimmed, and Patrick was standing again as soon as he saw him, letting out a squawk that was intended to sound questioning and concerned. From the way Joe and Pete both jumped back, it probably just sounded loud.

            “What’s wrong?” Andy asked. Joe looked to Pete, and god, looking at Joe was still so disconcerting. Patrick had what he liked to think of as a retrospective crush on Joe: as Patrick had been entirely convinced of his heterosexuality for a long time, he never really questioned the attachments he formed to other guys. However, looking back on things, he thought that the way he clung to Joe so fast was probably, back in high school, a crush he just hadn’t recognized as such. Whatever those feelings had been were long gone, but now that Joe had boobs and a feminine face… well, Patrick didn’t mind looking again.

            Though ogling Joe’s chest was seriously not the task at hand, he reminded himself, shaking his head.

            “We’re on a time crunch,” Pete said. “Ashley’s in labor.”

            All thoughts of raw meat and Joe’s boobs drained from Patrick’s head. He felt, suddenly, very cold. He squawked at Pete, and Pete gave him a desolate look in response.

            “Sounds like it just started,” Joe said, raising his hands placatingly. “There’s still time, is what I’m saying. And I found a nest, so if we can get this sorted nice and quick, we should get you back to the hospital in time!”

            Patrick looked from Joe to Pete to Andy, seeing that they were all hopeful. He felt an angry heat burning in his chest. He shrieked as loud as he could, a near ear-splitting sound, and felt a little vindicated at the frightened looks on all their faces. Patrick scratched his claws into the dirt and shrieked again.

            “What? What’s wrong?” Joe asked. Patrick wanted to let out a human scream, to somehow convey how un-fucking-fair this was. Clearly, none of of them had stopped to think about him.

            With a great deal of concentration, Patrick scratched the numbers “2” and “4” into the ground, then looked up at them again.

            “Twenty-four?” Joe said. He frowned at the number, up at Patrick, then back at the number. “Like… twenty-four hours? Like how long this will last?”

            Patrick bobbed his head frantically. Pete got it first, his eyes darkening as he looked at Patrick.

            “Even if I can get in,” he said. “We probably can’t get a dinosaur into the hospital.”

            Patrick probably shouldn’t have been as devastated as he was. It wasn’t even his kid, technically. It was Pete’s kid, but it was Patrick’s first experience being sort of a parent, and he was going to miss it. He decided that he was allowed to sulk about it, because he was a big dinosaur and it wouldn’t look as pathetic as it did if he was a 5’4” human guy.

            “Look,” Joe said, his voice a little desperate. “I promise, we will figure something out about that. In the meantime, the werewolf thing?”

            Patrick bobbed his head, and settled back down, making a show of listening to Joe. Waiting for a plan.

            “Right,” Joe said, glancing at all of them. “Right, okay, so, I think I found a nest of some sort in the woods, but that’s just where he’s burying the bones, so we can’t set up a trap there. I’m willing to bet that he doesn’t go back there until his victims are already dead. Ideally, we’d be able to set bait, but given the, uh, circumstances…”

            Patrick huffed. Joe nodded at him.

            “Right, so plan B, we set ourselves at strategic points all over town. Patrol a little? As soon as somebody sees or hears something, we all meet up and take him down.”

            “That’s the plan?” Andy asked. “It’s not much of one.”

            “Well, it’s all we’ve got, unless you had a better idea,” Joe said. Andy leaned back, silent.

            “Great,” he said. “So, I’ll go get the north side of town by the forest. Pete, you stick around here. Andy, you go west, Patrick, you take the east.”

            Patrick let out another scree, by which he meant to say: “ _There’s a pretty big flaw in your plan in that I am a dinosaur and can’t operate a cell phone to let you know what’s going on! Also, don’t leave Pete alone, he’s a kid and he can’t fight off a rabid werewolf!_ ”

            “Thanks, man,” Joe said, patting Patrick just above his wing joint, then running off. Patrick snorted again, frustrated. Fine, just fine. He could cover both his and Pete’s areas, to be safe. Like hell was he going to let anything happen to Pete on his watch.

            Patrick hopped over to Pete - walking, he had discovered quickly, was a difficult and graceless task - and nudged Pete lightly with his head. Pete stumbled, nearly falling on his ass, and Patrick’s face twisted up in what he supposed was his pteranodon approximation of sympathy. Patrick had thought his nudge had been gentle.

            “I’ll be okay,” Pete said. Patrick knew it wasn’t fair to think this, because Pete was still the same guy, just in a smaller body, but Patrick couldn’t help thinking that Pete was an unbelievably cute kid. His chin stuck up and his dark eyes were every bit as intense as they were when he grew up. Patrick had a sudden thought, and wished he could laugh properly in this body. This would be a great setup for a Peter Pan joke, even if he couldn’t think of anything specific.

            Patrick just gently nudged him again, and Pete stroked the top of his head.

            “It’ll be okay,” Pete promised. “We’ll take care of this like we always do.”

            Patrick wanted to say: “ _But we don’t, not always_.”

            Instead, he let out a soft squawk, then flapped his wings and kicked off the ground.

            Whatever sorrow Patrick was feeling, he left it on the ground. If he had learned anything as a pteranodon, it was that he fucking loved flying. The heavy, powerful beating of his wings, the sensation of buffeting air under him. It wasn’t the free, effortless gliding of dream flight, not so magical, but somehow that made it better. More real. He was doing this all on his own; staying airborne by his own power. When he pushed himself up into a current of air, he could glide for a moment in that dreamlike effortless flight, before pushing himself back up into the air again.  

            Just for the hell of it, he held his left wing close to his chest and flapped his right wing, spinning in midair until he turned in a tight spiral through the air. He let out a screech of joy before hurling himself back up high again, reveling in the arid wind against his thick skin, thinking that maybe being a human was totally lost on him, and he had secretly been meant to be a flying reptile a few million years ago.

            Unfortunately, he could only fly so far before leaving city limits, and eventually he beat his wings less and less until he landed softly on the ground. Not that anyone else had pointed it out, but it only took him the time Joe was gone getting clothes and a new car to teach himself how to fly pretty well. He could even land without skidding halfway across an open field. He was pretty proud of it all.

            He crouched in a position ready to fly, listening for any noise that could indicate an attack. In truth, Patrick wasn’t actually sure what he was supposed to do about fighting a werewolf. They had their hellhound experience, although Joe did most of the work taking down Brandon Flowers. They had run into a small pack of wolves in Ireland, when they were forming their own pack, and pulled a couple of guys who were in human form but definitely, according to Joe, wolves, off of a girl in an alley. But it was nothing compared to the experience that Patrick had with something like vampires. He normally wouldn’t wish for vampires, but he had a wonderfully sharp beak and claws, and thought it might be fun to tear something to shreds while he was still the stronger monster.

            Fantasies aside, he waited. When the sun sank down so far that the whole sky went a dark shade of orange, he kicked off into the skies, flying back over to the little speck on the ground that he recognized as Pete, circled him once from above, and went back to his resting spot.

            The sun had set so low that the sky was a dusky purple before Patrick noticed anything off. He heard (from much farther away than should have been possible) the sound of a wolf growling, then whining, claws scraping against glass. It sounded, Patrick realized, like it was trying to get inside. With that thought he took off, flapping his wings as infrequently as possible so he could follow the sound.

            He soared down into what looked like a suburban backyard, glanced around in the swiftly growing darkness, and saw… a beagle, pawing at a screen door and begging to go inside. Patrick was already low enough to the ground that he had to land, defeated, onto the grass. The beagle turned to the sound of his thud against the grass, and then started to howl as he pawed at the door, frantic at the sight of Patrick. He couldn’t shush the dog, though he started to try before remembering that, so Patrick prepared himself to take off once again. Before he took off, the door slid open.

            “Oh my god!” a woman yelled, but Patrick was already in the air, and hoped she would assume she was just going insane rather than calling the cops. The last thing he needed was to get locked up in some government testing center.

            Though, come to think of it, maybe the government knew all about magical creatures, and just decided not to deal with it. That sounded very American.

            Patrick was flying back to his spot when he heard another sound, not growling, but shouting, coming from the edge of town. Pete’s edge of town.

            At least, Patrick thought, if the monsters had to come to them, it made them easier to find. But any sense of relief he might have had was swept away at the sight of small, teenager Pete holding a whip above his head against not one, but three werewolves. All of them surrounding Pete with their teeth bared into snarls.

            It wasn’t a conscious decision to jump straight into this situation. Patrick moved on pure instinct as he swooped down and closed his leg claws around the torso of the wolf nearest Pete. He flew higher and then dropped the wolf to the ground, hearing a crunch like sticks breaking when it fell. Patrick was already swooping towards the next werewolf.

            He crushed the second wolf’s neck in his beak, though it was a little big for him. He just barely managed to get his beak around the neck and snap through its spine, hot blood seeping through the fur and pouring onto Patrick’s tongue. The taste made him remember that he was starving, would love nothing more than to devour this wolf, but there was another, and Patrick let the wolf in his beak roll onto the ground before knocking the third aside with a force that sent it sprawling a good fifteen feet away.

            When all the wolves were still, he whirled around to Pete. Pete was white faced and wide eyed, and he took a step back at the sight of Patrick. Patrick realized there was still blood dripping out of his beak, but he knelt down and made the most gentle sounding caw that he could manage. Pete still edged back, distrustful, so Patrick craned his neck and wiped the blood from his beak off on the grass. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw the third wolf edging back towards them, and he turned from Pete and let loose a horrible shriek, which sent the wolf scampering away.

            What Patrick wanted to say was “ _Hey, I’m sorry I scared you. Are you okay? Did they hurt you, and did you call the others? That was scary!_ ”

            All he was able to say was an ear splitting shriek that, to him, sounded pretty concerned. But Pete stepped back again, stumbling a little.

            “Patrick?” he said. “Are you- are you still in there?”

            Like he had been possessed, or something. It was a little insulting, and Patrick rolled his eyes, then made a big show of bobbing his head up and down.

            “Okay, right,” Pete said, his voice even higher than it had been after de-aging. “Um. Holy fucking shit, gimme a sec.”

            Pete fell all the way backwards and put his head between his knees, breathing deep. Patrick leaned in closer, but not too close, so he could hear Pete’s running string of whispered expletives.

            “Dude, that was so fucking scary,” Pete said, eventually. “Can you maybe step back a bit? Your breath smells like blood.”

            Self-conscious, Patrick skittered back a few steps.

            Joe and Andy were running up to them in the distance, Joe cursing as he went.

            “Fucking girl jeans, I couldn’t get my phone out and- Pete, are you okay?”

            “Yeah,” Pete said, waving a hand up at them. “Fine. Patrick tore their throats out.”

            Patrick made an indignant sort of click. He had torn one of their throats out, on accident. One of them wasn’t even dead. Joe, meanwhile, looked from Pete to the wolf bodies to Patrick, something between fear and disgust on his face, before he shrugged, resigned.

            “Well, that takes care of those two, I guess,” he said. “Um, in the future, Rick, let’s try not to kill them first?”

            Patrick’s wings twitched with annoyance, but he bobbed his head. He hadn’t been trying to kill them, not really, he’d been trying to get them the hell away from Pete.

            “We saw one run off, though,” Joe said. “And there’s more.”

            “Of course there’s more,” Pete said.

            “We’ve got another sighting north of here,” Joe said. “Like, a couple towns North. Someone died, and we should, well, check on that.”

            “How far from here?” Pete asked. “If someone’s already dead, there’s no time!”

            “I know,” Joe said. “But we have to hope they’ll stay there and, fuck, take their time.”

            He looked disgusted with himself while he spoke, but Patrick’s mind was only half on Joe’s reaction. He was mostly thinking about the wolf and how easy it had been to lift. Really, really easy.

            Patrick shrieked for attention again. His band stared at him, and he gave Pete a meaningful look before lying out as flat as possible, one wing extended Pete’s direction. It took a few seconds of silence, but luckily, Pete was a thirteen year old boy who had gone through a dinosaur phase. After a minute, he gasped:

            “Oh, no fucking way. Really?”

            Patrick bobbed his head as best he could, and that was all it took. Pete scrambled up the side of his wing - jabbing his heel into a soft spot on it, but whatever - and wrapping his legs around Patrick’s neck, just above the wing joint, in position to ride him.

            “Hey, um, so I’ve got about a thousand jokes to use right now, but in the interest of time I feel like I should mention that we won’t all fit up there,” Joe said. If Patrick could have, he would have smiled, though it probably wouldn’t have made an already terrified looking Andy feel any better.

            Instead, he pushed off the ground, holding himself carefully in what was almost a hover, and then snatched up Joe and Andy, one of them in either claw, before taking off north.

            From above and beneath him, Patrick could hear his band screaming at the top of their lungs. Pete, his arms wrapped in a near chokehold around Patrick’s neck, was mostly shouting in delight, and eventually he started laughing, thrilled and disbelieving noises close to Patrick’s head. Joe eventually stopped shouting in terror, took a few deep and shaky breaths, and just held tight to Patrick’s claw as best as he could. Andy, meanwhile, kept screaming like his life depended on it for a few minutes before he clung tight like Joe had, shaking in Patrick’s grip. Patrick felt a little bad. Mostly he was having fun.

            “Hey!” Joe shouted eventually, over the sound of rushing wind. “I think we need to start going down. This is the town!”

            Patrick started descending, getting low down over the outskirts of the town before unclenching his claws when he was a few feet from the ground. Joe and Andy tumbled to the earth, rolling over a few times, but Patrick didn’t hear any cracks like when he’d dropped the wolf earlier. He skidded to a stop not far from them, then folded himself down to the earth so Pete could scramble off. On the ground, looking at Patrick, Pete was still visibly delighted.

            “That was _so fucking cool_!” he shouted. Andy made a sort of whimpering noise somewhere behind them.

            “It was not cool!” Andy said. “I’m in pain and I- don’t you ever do that again!”

            Patrick couldn’t shrug, so Andy just shuddered.

            “I don’t think we’re far,” Joe said. “So I’m going to go find them; the rest of you follow after me.”

            When no one argued, Joe started running off. Patrick did his own hopping sort of walk after him, Andy leading the way. Andy turned around every now and then, casting Patrick uneasy looks. Patrick eventually chittered at him, which he hoped Andy would take as dinosaur for “ _What?!_ ”

            “I don’t like this,” Andy said. “Not just the…” he gestured at Patrick, “The dinosaur thing. This all feels too easy, too simple. I’m nervous, and I just. I feel nervous.”

            “You’re a prey animal,” Pete reminded him. “You’re supposed to be nervous.”

            “I’m also still freaked out that we found Patrick with a mouthful of some dude’s blood!”

            Patrick resented that. It was a beakful of blood from someone who had tried to kill Pete.

            “Well, he’s still Patrick,” Pete said resolutely. “Come on. Let’s not lose Joe on top of everything else.”

            The two of them moved a little quicker, Patrick hopping alongside them. As they were walking, Andy continued.

            “We also saw one of them get away,” he said. “He could be causing more trouble.”

            “One emergency at a time,” Pete said.

            They followed after Joe, and Patrick could only assume that Andy was following Joe’s scent, because he was soon lost in the dusky darkness. This town, nestled between forests and mountains, looked so different from the California that Patrick knew. It seemed to exude an aura of sleepiness. As they approached it, Patrick couldn’t help but wondering why this was happening in the first place. He had thought earlier that they hadn’t fought off many werewolves in the past, and as he thought about it, he realized that the reason was that there had been no cause to. Werewolves were, in personality, the same as humans. They didn’t gang up on people and attack them for no reason. Why would there be piles of bones in the woods, anyway?

            He didn’t have long to ponder. They were approaching the edge of a forest yet again, and Andy held up a hand in caution, slowing his steps in exaggerated quiet. Andy’s footsteps were already dead silent since he had hooves walking against grass, but Pete and Patrick had to make an effort to quiet the sounds of their movement. Patrick leaned forward, listening as hard as he could to the sounds of words coming from the forest.

            “...please!” was the first thing he was able to discern, high pitched and pleading, muffled by all the trees between the source of the voice and Patrick. Just the one word managed to chill Patrick to his core, though. Something in the man’s voice, the broken despair in his pleading, it was too familiar.

            “...don’t want to hurt you,” a woman said. “It’s for the greater good, you have to understand.”

            The man was sobbing, and Patrick felt suddenly very frail and very human, but he held himself still and steady, waiting for a signal.

            “...home, I want to go home, god, what are you doing…”

            Patrick leaned his neck in further to the woods, hoping to discern what they were saying.

            “This won’t be a waste, I promise.”

            There was a crashing of underbrush, and Joe’s cry as he ran forward, but then another shout, and a woman’s voice saying “Gotcha!”

            Andy and Pete ran into the woods, and Patrick made to follow them, but the trees were too close together, and his size kept him from maneuvering through the trees with the same ease as them. He folded his wings in before doing his embarrassing hop-walk through the forest, by which time he heard the cries of Pete and Andy mingling with Joe, and the laughter of a great deal of people in the air. The unknown man was still whimpering, though.

            Up ahead, Patrick could see light through the trees, but he slowed, moving as carefully and quietly as possible. He would have one chance at surprise, he reasoned, so he ought to watch first. He crept up to the break in the trees to take in the sight.

            A group of people - werewolves, he assumed - were clustered around a bonfire, with one man tied to a pole that was uncomfortably close to the flames. Just within the circle of firelight, Pete, Andy, and Joe were being held, one werewolf to each of them.

            “So this is it?” the woman who Patrick heard earlier said with a short laugh. Her eyes were hard and feral, and she was holding Pete tight, arms wrapped around his torso so that he couldn’t move. “The famous Fall Out Boy, and this is all there is? I’m a little underwhelmed, guys.”

            “Hold it,” another woman said. “There should be four of them.”

            “Well, we’re only missing the human,” the first woman said. “I doubt he’ll be much of a challenge for us.” She twisted Pete round, and leered at him. “Isn’t he supposed to be the pretty one? He looks like a child.” Her leer turned into a smile. “Guess they were wrong. Fall Out Boy looks like a pretty easy hit after all.”

            Feeling like he couldn’t ask for better dramatic timing than that, Patrick burst out into the clearing, wings spread, with a screech that cut through the night. Chaos erupted.

***

            Pete was having a hell of a day. He didn’t want to go through and catalog all the events of the day that were making him so biblically miserable, but they were, to say the least, numerous.

            A great deal of his misery was alleviated when his boyfriend, the monstrous, long extinct reptile with a wingspan that could rip open a house, flew into the scene, screeching like some shadow creature out of an HP Lovecraft story.

            The werewolves gathered around them were, needless to say, more than a little shocked by the abrupt introduction of what was effectively a dinosaur into their midst.

            The woman holding Pete didn’t let go, but she did scream directly into his ear as she yanked him backwards. Joe and Andy’s captors let them go, and some of the people in the clearing simply scattered, running off into the woods. Pete looked up at the pteranodon as it towered over all of them, and then lunged forward directly at Pete, as though it was going to rip him in half, but Pete didn’t flinch.

            The woman holding him, however, did, and as she did, Pete dove forward and out of her grasp, moving over to stand next to Joe and Andy. Patrick edged closer to the woman, predatorial clicking coming steadily from him, and she fell backwards, her mouth open in wordless fear.

            “Patrick, don’t let her get away,” Joe called. Obligingly, Patrick domed his wings around her so she couldn’t escape.

            “In fact, everyone hold still!” Joe shouted. Everyone who remained in the clearing went very, very still, all of them eyeing Patrick in horror. Patrick’s head twisted back around, farther than his human head was able to turn, but Pete was less horrified, now. He was starting to recognize the pterosaur as _Patrick_ rather than just some faceless monster, and it was hard to be scared of Patrick.

            For his part, Patrick squawked at Joe, and pointedly looked at the man tied to a pole, looking every bit as terrified as the wolves.

            “Right,” Joe said. “Pete, go untie him.”

            Pete ran over to the fire, his hands slippery with sweat as he tried to force the knots around the man undone. The man, who was still whimpering a little. Pausing with the knots, Pete got up on his toes to clap a hand down on the man’s shoulder.

            “Don’t worry,” Pete said. “We’re the good guys. The dinosaur is my boyfriend, and he’s gonna help you out.”

            “Did they say you were Pete Wentz?” the man asked, his face somehow inquisitive underneath all the soot and snot. Pete fell back on his feet, and let out a long sigh.

            “Well, no one will believe you if you try to tell them,” he said, and he went back to undoing the knots. As soon as he had ripped the ropes free, Pete left the hostage and ran over to Joe’s side, where he was interrogating the woman trapped under Patrick’s wings.

            “Okay, let’s ask a simpler question,” Joe said. “Are you in charge here?”

            “In a manner of speaking,” she said. Joe threw his hands up in the air.

            “She speaks!” he said. “Now, the bodies in the woods?”

            “That’s not a question,” she spat. Patrick made a low, annoyed chirp at her, and she flinched away from him.

            “We wanted to get your attention, not the police’s,” she said.

            “Our attention?” Joe said, looking behind him at Pete, and behind Pete at Andy, still hovering near the edge of the trees, though he was keeping an eye on the other people in the clearing. “Like, the four of us?”

            “We were supposed to stop you,” she said. “We still will.”

            Pete had just enough warning to spin around and pull his whip out again, slashing it through the air at the man running towards him. The tail of the whip caught the man across the cheek hard enough to knock him back, but it wouldn’t hold him off for long.

            Patrick pushed up off the ground and shrieked, diving towards the man coming at Pete. Pete watched in rapt horror as his beak closed around the man’s arm with a thick snap, and the man screamed. Patrick tossed him aside like a rag doll, then lifted his wings to their full extent and shrieked out at the clearing. He took off and grabbed two more wolves, one in either claw, raised them up and dropped them. It wasn’t high enough this time to kill either of them, but it would hurt like hell. With another screech that shook the night, the rest of the wolves and people in the clearing stilled again.

            “Thank you, Patrick,” Joe said mildly, his hand wrapped around the woman’s throat. “Now, the task at hand - you killed innocent people.”

            “And what do you intend to do about it?!” the woman shouted. “Enact your own disgusting form of justice? Judge, jury, and executioner all coming from a shitty sellout pop punk band?!”

            “No,” Joe said. “I was gonna ask you guys nicely to not kill anyone ever again. And then if you disagree _or_ we get wind of you killing again, then we’ll kill you to prevent another massacre like what we found back in Napa.”

            Joe let her drop to the ground, then pulled out his gun and cocked it, aiming it directly at her forehead where she lay, sprawled out on the dirt. “And if you don’t like our form of justice, we’ll be happy to let you explain to the police why you’ve murdered dozens of people. I’ll bet they don’t think that the greater good is a justifiable defense either.”

            Finally, the woman lifted her hands up in a position of resignation.

            “Excellent,” Joe said, all business. “Well, if you don’t mind, we’re on a bit of a tight schedule. You know the rules, I think: no killing, no maiming, while we’re at it, no hurting any innocents. Spread the word to your friend back in Napa while you’re at it. We ought to take better care of this, but given the circumstances,” he glanced at Patrick, who was making a dangerous clicking noise at one of the wolves, a hungry look in his eyes, “I think we’ll avoid loss of life if we just compromise.”

            “Wait!”

            Pete turned, expected the cry to have come from one of the men in the mob of werewolves they had interrupted, but it was the man he had just untied. He was a little older than Pete - or, older than Pete had been yesterday - wearing suit pants and a rumpled white button up. He took a hesitant step forward, and for as frightened as he looked, Pete had to admire the courage in stepping closer to the woman who seemed pretty intent on roasting him alive not long before then.

            “May I?” he asked Joe, and Joe waved him forward.

            “Why me?” the man asked. “Why did you- why were you going to do this to me?”

            The woman, as she stood to her feet and brushed dirt off her clothes, gave the man a pitying look.

            “You were there,” she said. “We just wanted to draw Fall Out Boy out. We figured they would show up as soon as there was a death toll. Nothing personal.”

            Pete could see the pain in the man’s face, and felt it resonate through his bones too. He was just collateral damage. Just the effect of people trying to get to someone else, someone more powerful. His suffering was just a byproduct.

            Patrick’s aura throbbed with a familiar pain as well.

            Joe took hold of the man’s arm, giving him a sympathetic, almost maternal look.

            “Get yourself out of here,” he said. “Go away and try to live your life as normal, try to forget about this, okay?”

            The man nodded mutely and limped off into the forest. Joe turned back to the woman who had organized this, and he took in a deep breath.

            “Get out,” he said. “Before I change my mind.”

            The wolves ran out in all directions, leaving all of them alone in the forest clearing, with nothing but the sound of the bonfire shooting out sparks.

            “Well,” Pete said. “Now what?” His voice cracked a little, but no one commented on it, which was kind.

            “Now, we get you back to LA,” Joe said. “Um. And we put out this fire before all of California goes up in smoke.”

            “Wildfires don’t usually get too bad this far north,” Andy said.

            “Still,” Joe said. He started to kick the fire down, lowering the flames and stamping on any runaway embers. Pete fidgeted until Joe got the whole situation down to embers and turned back to them.

            “Patrick, how far and how fast can you fly?” Joe asked.

            Patrick glared at him rather than squawking, but even as a dinosaur, his eyes clearly said “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

            “How about we stick to yes or no questions?” Pete suggested. “Like, Patrick, do you think you can fly us all back to LA?”

            Patrick hesitated, then shook his head. Pete was about to start crying, but Patrick squawked and held his mouth open for a long time, making a pleading face at Pete.

            “Oh,” Pete said. “Are you… hungry?”

            “Pete the dinosaur whisperer,” Andy said, as Patrick bobbed his head fervently.

            “He’s been flying all day,” Pete said. “It’s not that hard of a guess. Do you think you could do it after you ate?”

            Another head bob.

            “Could you get us back to Napa before then so one of us can buy you some ground beef?” Pete asked. “Andy, don’t give me that look, he’s a carnivore. Yes, you can? Awesome: let’s get a move on.”

            After a very brief detour (and some frankly disgusting dinosaur eating noises which Pete could have lived his whole life without hearing) they were in the air again. Far beneath Pete, over the roar of the wind, he could hear Andy muttering an endless stream of curses.

            Pete, though, was exhilarated. The organic rise and fall of Patrick’s body felt as natural as the rhythm of a heartbeat, the way they cut through currents of air almost peaceful. Pete kept his arms wrapped tight around Patrick’s neck and his eyes open wide against the wind. This, flying like he was on the back of a dragon in a fantasy novel, was too incredible to miss a single second of.

            Sure, he thought, there were bad things about magic. The egrigors were proof enough of that. And, frankly, it was a little inconvenient that he was a pre-teen and his boyfriend a long extinct reptile while his son was being born. But this, the pure, unadulterated joy that came with things both impossible and beautiful, that made all the bullshit that came with magic seem completely worth it.

            Joe shouted something over the wind and the flapping of Patrick’s wings, somewhere down underneath Pete’s feet, but it was indecipherable. Pete twisted as far around as he could while still holding on tight, fixed his eyes on Joe where he was held in Patrick’s claw, and shouted back: “WHAT?!”

            “I said, are we sure he’s faster than a car?” Joe yelled back, his voice still mostly swallowed by the night air rushing past them. Pete squinted down. They weren’t flying just above the freeway, just in case, but adjacent to it, so as not to get lost. He saw the glittering trail of cars and fixed his eyes on one set of headlights, watching as they crept behind them and winked off into the distance.

            “Positive!” Pete shouted back. He buried his chin in the crook of Patrick’s neck, trying to stay in the slipstream so that watching the world soar by would be that much easier. The skin there was rough, more than just in a reptile way, and Pete looked closer until he saw the stretched, faded word “coward.” The scars hadn’t quite gone away, but they were a hell of a lot harder to see like this.

            As California passed beneath them, a vast, dark tangle of land that seemed so wild and untamed from this far up, Pete held himself close to Patrick. He was marveling in the feeling of wings beating, and found himself nearly falling asleep to their gentle pattern. Odd, since he remembered having the hardest time falling asleep when he was a kid. Maybe the secret was Patrick, wherever and whenever and whatever Pete was, Patrick was the one thing that could soothe him.

            It would’ve been useful information to have when he was younger and living in the same city as the punk, but whatever.

            The spiderweb tangle of lights that was LA became visible in the distance soon enough, and the knot of anxiety returned to Pete’s stomach with a vengeance as it hit him. He was having a baby. He was about to have a child, and it, of course, happened while he _was_ a child, which felt like a hilarious cosmic joke. He didn’t know the first thing about raising kids, didn’t have any sort of plan, just a cute, forest themed nursery, and a cuter boyfriend who loved children. It didn’t feel like enough.

            “Land on the outskirts of the city, somewhere,” Pete said, his voice high and thin with tension. “We don’t need the government shooting you down now of all times.”

            Not that they were usually in danger of the US government literally shooting Patrick out of the sky, so Pete’s warning felt off. But still.

            Patrick dropped Joe and Andy to the ground a little too roughly before skidding into the grass, sending Pete tumbling off after them. Pete was genuinely grateful to be thirteen in that moment, because he doubted his 29-year-old back could recover from a fall like that quite so easily. He turned in time to see Patrick stretch out his wings and squawk at Pete. There were no words, and his eyes weren’t Patrick’s, and his aura wasn’t totally human, but Pete could still identify the sadness, the accusation. Only one of them could get into a hospital room. The kid wasn’t technically Patrick’s, but...

            “Okay,” Pete said. He was tired and grass stained and his whole body felt like it fit wrong, but the night was far from over. “I think I’ve got at least one more stupid plan left in me. Joe, you stick with Patrick and keep your phone on and turned up loud. Andy, help me catch a taxi.”

            “I have antlers,” Andy said.  
            “Yeah, but this is LA,” Pete said. “People see weirder shit every day.” He took a step towards Patrick, stretching his hand out again. Patrick lowered his head, just enough so that Pete could pat the top of his beak.

            “I was thinking of Bronx,” Pete said. “But I wanted to ask if you liked it, first. This isn’t super fair, but nod if you’re game. Bronx? Bronx Mowgli?”

            Patrick made an almost human snort of laughter, but he bobbed his head in a nod, and relief washed through Pete.

            “Hey, I love you,” Pete said. “And I’ve got a plan.”

            He bent his head close to Patrick’s, almost touching.

            “Please don’t kiss right now,” Joe said. “I’m not homophobic, but he’s a fucking dinosaur right now.”

            Just to spite him, Pete pressed a kiss to Patrick’s beak before turning towards the road.

            “Phone on!” he shouted, and Andy hailed a cab. The two of them slid into the backseat, Andy slouched down in an uncomfortable looking position. The driver didn’t look at them twice, as Pete predicted, nor did he speed up when they said they were going to the hospital, but Pete found that he didn’t care. They were already this close, closer and faster than he had expected when he got the call. His anxiety didn’t feel too bad either. Like it had plateaued somewhere far behind them, and his body had numbed itself to the impossibility of the moment.

            Andy ran into the hospital with him, ignoring the weird looks he attracted, and Pete skidded up to the reception desk, breathless.

            “I’m here for Ashlee Simpson,” he said. “I’m Pete Wentz.”

            He slammed his ID on the counter, one that pictured a much older version of himself, but clearly still looking like him. He caught the eye of the man behind the counter and let his eyes flash gold.

            “ _Don’t think about it_ ,” he said softly, and the receptionist nodded, vacantly.

            “Three-eleven,” he said. “Third floor, on your right.”

            “Sir,” someone in a chair said to Andy. “Did you know you have hooves?”

            “Yeah, I came from a, uh, convention,” Andy said. “Gotta go.”

            On the elevator up, Pete squeezed Andy’s arm. He had started shaking again and was using every ounce of his will to not hit an emergency button and run away. _His kid his son his baby_.

            “It’s gonna be okay,” Andy said. “It’s gonna be insane. But good.”

            “I know,” Pete said.

            He paused only very briefly in front of three eleven, then pushed the door open.

            At first, he could only see Ashlee, her hair pulled back from her sweaty face. She looked less made-up than Pete had seen her in the entire time they’d known each other, including mornings after and while fighting Evil-Dead-nymph-monsters. Sweaty and tired as she was, she did glow - her aura shimmered with pride and love and loss and acceptance all at once.

            But her face could only hold him for so long.

            Bundled up in Ashlee’s arms was a baby. His baby.

            Ashlee looked up at him, and then her eyes went wide.

            “Pete, oh my God,” she said. “You’re, like, twelve!”

            “Thirteen,” Pete said. “It’s a long story. Can I?”

            She stretched out the tiny little white-blanketed bundle, and Pete stepped forward, pulling the baby in close to him. His eyes were closed, his red face wrinkled and scrunched. He was alien looking, and yet beautiful. Tiny, perfectly round nose. Tiny, perfect lips. Little, miniature eyelids and fingernails, and an aura that glowed a pure, pearlescent white. Untouched and unharmed by the world.

            His son. Something that beautiful had come from him.

            “Andy has horns,” Ashlee said. “Like, huge deer horns.”

            “Antlers,” Andy said.

            “Details!” Ashlee said. “Where’s Patrick?”

            “He’s a dinosaur - well, not really a dinosaur, but a long extinct flying reptile that kind of looks like a dinosaur…”

            Andy and Ashlee’s conversation faded into nothing. Pete had eyes for only one thing in the room, and he grinned down at it.

            “Hey, baby,” he said. “Bronx. You like it? I hope you do, because I do, and you can change it later and I won’t be mad or anything, but I think it suits you. I’m your dad, kid. And you’re coming into a really fucked up world, but-”

            Pete cut off, choked up. His kid.

            He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, holding the baby, but eventually, he turned back to Andy, who was watching him with a knowing expression. Because of course, he understood.

            “Okay, Andy, can you help me out?” Pete asked.

            “That’s what I’m here for,” Andy said.

            “Great, go downstairs and look for me waving in the window. When you see me, count how many up and over we are, call Joe, and let him know.”

            Andy caught on at once, eyes wide.

            “You think that’s a good idea? We’re not exactly in a remote location, here.”

            “He doesn’t have to come if he thinks it won’t be safe,” Pete said. “But I’m up for pushing any and all of my luck tonight.”

            Andy nodded, and ran downstairs.

            “Patrick?” Ashlee guessed.

            “Well, I can’t bring a pteranodon into the hospital, but I can fly one up to the window,” Pete said. “And Bronx is - I don’t know. I think he’s Patrick’s kid too. I think he’s _your_ kid too. Takes a village, and all that.”

            “Bronx?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Well, you’re spoiling him already,” Ashlee said. “Kid gets three parents instead of two.”

            “He’ll need a dozen to make up for me,” Pete said. Ashlee shook her head, looking at the two of them with something inscrutable in her eyes.

            “No,” she said. “He won’t.”

            Pete kept a secure grip on the baby as he went to the window and waved down at the sidewalk, where a very misshapen silhouette waved up at him, then pulled out a phone.

            While Andy called on the street below, Bronx started to fuss. Pete rocked him, very gently, and kissed his forehead. The baby had startling, icy blue eyes.

            “Give him to me,” Ashlee said. “He might be hungry.”

            “Oh,” Pete said. “Right. Jesus, but we didn’t think of any practical plans at all, did we?”

            “No,” Ashlee laughed. She took Bronx back and adjusted her hospital gown, keeping her and Bronx mostly covered while Pete looked anywhere else, overwhelmed with awkwardness that was either from being her ex or being thirteen. “No, we didn’t. But I’m going to be leaking from my boobs for a while anyway, so I can pump in the beginning, if you want.”

            “That would be amazing,” Pete said. “Ash, I can’t thank you enough-”

            “No, you can’t,” Ashlee said. “Better that we don’t try keeping up with what we owe each other, yeah?”

            “Yeah,” Pete said, his voice half a laugh, even as he was crying.

            Patrick was a fast flyer, and soon there was a gentle tapping on the window. Pete took Bronx back and drew the curtain aside.

            The window wouldn’t open, and Patrick couldn’t hover there long. But he saw Bronx, and Pete saw him, and that was enough. It was weird, but it was him, and his Patrick, and his son, and Pete couldn’t remember ever being happier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate title via my beta: "rawr means i love you in dinosaur"
> 
> anyways, gave you guys some things you've been asking for! genderswap, wings, and more seriously, a light chapter. I was initially going to do another serious, plot chapter, really heavy and dramatic, but I had from a few sources that we could use a breather. So, I'm hoping you guys liked it!
> 
> I hope I handled gender bending okay - I'm writing a cis Joe, so I stayed with he/him pronouns even while his body was more feminine.
> 
> thanks, by the way, for all of you artists who messaged me about art stuff - that little side thing hasn't gotten off the ground, but I do appreciate it and I am working on it, so thank you thank you thank you 
> 
> sorry for the wait, but I'm glad you guys are still into it! thanks as always to my outstanding beta, and to my wife, and to the anon who suggested i do a magical coffee transformation thing ages ago on tumblr, and to all of you for your patience
> 
> chapter title by All Time Low


	7. Master of Puppets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pete is on a mission to make peace with some of the ghosts of his past when he discovers very unsettling news. And as bleak as the egrigors seem, they turn out to be only the tip of the iceberg where danger is concerned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for: mentions of noncon, blood, violence

            Later in the impossibly long night when Bronx was born (or possibly very early the next morning), Ashlee said to Pete “You know birth records are public information in the state of California, right?”

            From the look on Pete’s face, he did not know that.

            Joe was curled up on an uncomfortable hospital chair, the plastic edges of the furniture cutting into his girl body in all kinds of weird ways while Pete tried to determine what the hell to do next.

            Because, of course, he could try and keep Bronx a secret, the way Andy did Carmilla. But it was 2008, and he was Pete Wentz, and babies weren’t a very easy thing to keep secret when the paparazzi followed you everywhere. He couldn’t very well lock the kid inside and never let him come out.

            But if he did tell the world about Bronx, then what? What about Ashlee? What about Patrick? What was the story and how would he possibly spin it?

            When confronted with all these questions, Pete decided aloud that he could deal with all of that later. Joe, by then, was way too exhausted to fight him on it.

            Joe woke up late the next morning with his dick back and his chest flat and his skin felt right again. He almost started crying, he was so happy. He missed his dick. He was grateful to have it back where it belonged.

            He was less excited to hear that they all, even now, had to go right back to finishing the goddamn album.

            Joe walked into the studio and saw a very tired, ruffled looking human Patrick curled up in a chair, holding a cup of coffee but looking a little distrustful with every sip. He looked up at Joe and shrugged.

            “We’ve technically got enough material again,” he said. “We’re just going over some of the edits today, even if it’s not perfect.”

            They had reached a pretty nice place, but Joe couldn’t help but asking.

            “You’d let it get released even if it’s not perfect?”

            Patrick shuddered.

            “Dude, I woke up completely naked in the backyard and vomiting ground beef. If you would like to re-record something, you’re welcome to, but I’m goddamn exhausted.”

            Joe nodded, then looked around the room. He didn’t see Pete anywhere - but then, the door blew open and an equally exhausted looking Pete dragged himself in, also holding a cup of coffee.

            “Just the one of you, then?” Joe asked. Pete waved his hand.

            “Still in the hospital. Monitoring and stuff. Songs?”

            “Neil’s pretty much got it,” Patrick yawned. “We’re just here for the official final say.”

            “Oh, excellent,” Pete said. “Cause I have work to do.”

            He pulled out a list that was scrawled onto a piece of paper and tugged his cell phone out of his tight jeans pocket. He dialed a number, and then leaned back against the wall.

            “Hey, Michelle, it’s Pete,” he said in his best smiling-for-strangers voice. “Yeah, long time no see, I know. How’ve you been? Yeah? Oh, I’m good, I’m grand, I was just calling to ask… yeah, this might sound strange, but are you pregnant? Fantastic, and you haven’t been pregnant? Okay, awesome. If you get pregnant between now and…” Pete squinted at the paper. “Um, 2011, and you’re not one hundred percent positive who the dad is, you call me, okay? No, I’m not fucking with you. Just do it? Yeah? Thanks.”

            He hung up, crossed out one line on the page, and turned back to his phone, apparently oblivious to the fact that everyone in the room was staring at him.

            “Hey, Pete?” Patrick said, his voice mild and polite. “Whatcha doing?” Pete grimaced and turned the paper around. The sheet was crammed with messy blue writing: names, numbers, years, and a lot of question marks, all sporadic.

            “I was talking to Ashlee and she suggested that I, um, check in with some people,” Pete said. “Because, you know, most girls have more than one partner and they might not know, or they’re realistically not on the lookout, and I need to make sure I don’t have any other, um, little baby Wentz’s running around,” he said.

            “The list?” Patrick asked, his face twisted up in a chagrined expression as well, like he already wished he hadn’t asked.

            “I’m pretty sure this is every girl I’ve slept with in the past five years,” Pete said. Joe couldn’t help it, his eyes bugged a little. He knew lots of guys who slept around more than that, but even so. It was a long list, and it was kind of alarming to see all the names (or question marks, where he assumed names had been forgotten) all in a row.

            “Oh,” Patrick said. “Right. I think I’m gonna get tested.”

            Pete’s head snapped up.

            “Do you have a fucking problem?” he asked. Patrick looked taken aback.

            “No, I don’t- it was a joke, babe.”

            “Not a very funny one,” Pete said, and he turned back to his list. Patrick made a face, then pulled out his computer, with a muttered “Whatever.”

            Joe decided he was going to stay out of that one. He didn’t particularly care to know what it was like dating Pete Wentz or being Pete Wentz, but he could imagine both sides were pretty fraught.

            He did, however, listen in on Pete’s phone calls, which were endlessly entertaining. So much so that when Andy came in, Joe shushed him and raised his eyebrows over at Pete, who had just hit a familiar name.

            “Jeanae!” Pete said, unconvincingly faking fondness. “It’s me, Pete. Yeah- yes, I still have your number. Okay, there’s no need to- that’s a very creative thing to wish on someone.”

            Andy glanced down at the page, then up at Joe, and shook his head.

            “I just need to- please don’t hang up on me - I just need to ask you if you’re pregnant!”

            There was a moment of silence, and then a flurry of swears and shouting coming from the phone. Andy settled back into a seat, head resting on the palm of his hand.

            “I think today’s going to be a long day,” he said.

            Andy’s assumption was right. They listened to each finished track one by one, suggesting minor tweaks to each song. All the while, Joe tried to ignore the background noise of staticky shouting, cursing, or cold tones from vaguely recognizable female voices, and the slightly closer noise of an ever-weary Pete going through his slew of questions. Are you pregnant? Have you been pregnant recently? Will you, in spite of all I’ve done, call me if you become pregnant?

            He also, Joe noticed, tended to tack on some apologies. For ditching them, for disappearing on them, for cheating on them, once or twice. In the case of what sounded like one-night stands, Pete apologized for never calling them back, but Joe was shocked to realize how many of the people on the list were people Pete had, for some period of time, dated. Pete was five years older than him, but Joe felt a faint pride at how maturely he was handling the whole thing.

            Joe did also feel a faint sense of uneasiness when he felt tenseness emanating from Patrick like a physical object. Joe hadn’t had any relationships before Marie that were serious or progressed to a level of having sex, but he couldn’t imagine that having all this dredged up would be fun. Nor would it make it easy to pay attention to music. Still, the day wore on, and Pete carved through his list while they carved through the album.

            “You haven’t put Mikey on there,” Andy said, craning his neck over Pete’s shoulder.

            “To the best of my knowledge, Mikey doesn’t have a womb,” Pete said. “So.”

            “Yeah, but we keep getting sidelined by freaky magic shit,” Andy reasoned. “Isn’t it better to check?”

            Pete glared at him, but a flash of worry passed over his face. With a sigh, he dialed a number very quickly before holding the phone up to his ear, looking ancient with weariness and apparently not noticing at all how much Joe and Andy were snickering every time they caught sight of one another.

            “ _Mikey’s phone_.”

            “Um, hey, Gerard,” Pete said. “Can I talk to Mikey? On his private cell phone, that I called on purpose?”

            “ _He’s a bit tied up right now, but I can take a message_ ,” Gerard said cheerfully.

            “It’s kinda pressing. And, um, kinda private,” Pete said.

            “ _Oh, I mean, he’s literally tied up now. With ropes. Can I take a message?_ ”

            “He’s tied up with - why?”

            “ _Minor demon issue, don’t worry about it. What did you want to ask?_ ”  
            “Demon, he’s - he’s not pregnant, right?” Pete asked. There was a long, thick silence on the other end, and the album restarted, filling the room with Patrick’s voice once again.

            “ _No_ ,” Gerard said. “ _No, definitely not. Why?_ ”

            “Well, see, I recently discovered I kind of… sort of… have magical sperm, and-”

            “ _Oh Jesus fucking Christ, no, I don’t want to hear about your sperm, no, he’s not pregnant, no, we don’t need your help, yes I’ll call you back if any of the above changes, okay?_ ”

            “Okay, great, let’s never discuss this again.”

            “ _Good idea_.”

            “Bye.”

            Even Patrick was laughing by the time Pete hung up, cheeks more red than pink as he glared at them.

            “You didn’t really think he was going to be pregnant, huh?” he asked Andy.

            “There’s always a possibility, you know, with magic,” Andy said, poorly disguising his smile.

            “Jackasses, all of you,” Pete said. “See if any of you end up Bronx’s godfather.”

            “Feel like it’d be weird if it were me anyway,” Patrick said mildly. “No, you know what, Neil, not just acapella, I’ve changed my mind.”

            “Instead of doing the daddy and poppa thing you could be daddy and god-daddy,” Joe suggested.

            “Never say the word ‘god-daddy’ ever again, okay?” Pete asked. He paused. “I haven’t called Morgan yet.”

            “Jeez, I would’ve gotten that one over with first,” Joe said.

            “It’s just her and a girl from LA,” Pete said. “Um, Lauren. You guys remember her?”

            “Yeah,” Patrick said. He sounded deeply weary, but he put on half a grimace for Pete. “Kinda pretty, into poetry. You broke up with her the same day Anna broke up with me. Definitely the most normal girl from the Cokewoods. I liked her.”

            “Well, that’s good to know, I think you know more than me,” Pete said. Joe had a vague memory of her too, though, broken up with right before their run in with a succubus, before they went on tour. He remembered plates being smashed, but lots of things got smashed when you lived around Pete, so that wasn’t too weird.

            “I’ll save her for a palate cleanser,” Pete said after a moment of thinking. “Can’t be worse than what’ll come before.” He held his breath, raised his eyes skyward, and dialed fast.

            It was hard even remembering Morgan at that point. Back before Patrick knew what any of them were, before they were monster fighters, before they got signed - hell, most of the relationship took place before Joe lived with Pete. And yet, he realized, the last relapse had taken place less than five years ago, so she was still a possibility. Joe shuddered at the thought. He had never liked Morgan - possibly just because she reminded him too much of Pete. They were too similar, a whirlwind of destruction.

            “Hey,” Pete said in a false cheerful voice. “It’s Pete. Uh, yeah, that Pete. Don’t hang up on me, it’s not about getting back together or anything. I just, uh, need to know if you’re pregnant?

            “You are?”

            Joe inhaled sharply, and saw out of the corner of his eyes Patrick’s hands tightening into fists. Pete looked close to swooning.

            “Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said. “Look, I’m so sorry, I just found out about this recently and I swear, when we were together, I had no idea that I could-”

            “ _Why the fuck would you think it’s yours?_ ”

            “Wait,” Pete said. He was standing, pacing a tiny circle with his free hand in his hair. “Do you - know who the father is?”

            “ _Yeah, jackass, it’s my husband_ ,” she snapped. “ _Why are you calling?_ ”

            “Um,” Pete paused. “I have… magic… semen?”

            “ _Never contact me again_.”  
            “Wait, are you sure it’s your husband’s?”

            “ _Goodbye_.”

            “Wait, Morgan, I wanted to apologize and tell you-!”

            But the line was dead by then. Pete looked a little distressed, but Joe shrugged at him.

            “You’ve done all you can, dude,” he said.

            “If you say so,” Pete said. “She would call back if something was wrong, right?”

            “Doubtful,” Andy said. “But if you’re really nervous, I can try and, I dunno, spy on them later. Make sure she’s not raising a half-faery without knowing it.”

            “Thanks,” Pete said. “Great. One last one.”

            Lauren, Joe thought to himself. They had actually been together for a few months, he remembered. She didn’t handle the breakup with cold anger - she’d been sobbing, screaming, and, Joe recalled with a twinge of guilt, he’d hidden in his bedroom while it all played out.

            Patrick and Pete looked at each other with a moment of tense silence, speaking entirely with their eyes. It looked like an apology from both of them, and that was something to be grateful for, Joe thought.

            “Hey, Lauren?” Pete said. He was trying to sound cordial and detached still, but his voice was weary. “Um, it’s me, Pete Wentz. Do you remember me?”

            There was a long pause, and Joe felt a brief flicker of something. Dread building up in his chest.

            “ _Wow_ ,” she said. “ _Pete Wentz. Really. I didn’t. I didn’t expect you to call me. I didn’t think you remembered my number._ ”

            “Jesus,” Pete laughed, a self-deprecating laugh. He scratched the back of his head. “Didn’t think I was that bad, but um. I’m so sorry about this, and this is going to sound strange but I have to ask you a question: are you pregnant?”

            “ _That-_ that’s _your question?_ ” she asked. “ _No, I’m not- why would you-?_ ”

            “Have you been pregnant since we slept together?” Pete asked with another wince, like he was swallowing live coals every time he opened his mouth.

            “ _No,_ ” she laughed, her voice sounding a little hysterical. She couldn’t still be hung up after two years, could she? Joe glanced at Pete, and his face mirrored the fear Joe felt. “ _Jesus, no, I haven’t been with any- I haven’t been pregnant. Why?_ ”

            “It’s a really long story,” Pete said. “But if you get pregnant in the next…” he glanced down at the paper he had set down, “Uh, three years or so, out of the blue, would you call me?”

            “ _Yeah,_ ” she said. “ _Sure. Why not? That’s what you wanted to talk to me about?_ ”

            “Well, that, and,” Pete glanced at Patrick for - permission? Encouragement? Joe couldn’t tell. “I wanted to apologize.”

            The line was quiet for a long time.

            “ _You wanted. To apologize,_ ” she said. Her voice had gone entirely flat.

            “Yeah,” Pete said. “I was - I was rotten. I led you on, I never made my feelings clear - no, that’s not true. I told you what I felt in the moment, but you didn’t have all the information to know who I am, what I’m like. Sometimes I mean things in a moment and say them even when I know I won’t mean them in the morning. I promised you things I wanted to keep but knew, deep down, that I couldn’t. But I like to think I’ve started to grow up a bit, and I’m- fuck, Lauren, I’m really sorry.”

            There was yet another long, sticky silence, but Joe could hear Lauren’s breathing getting heavier.

            “Anyway,” Pete said at long last. “That’s all, but this is my number, so I won’t contact you again, but you can call me if- you know. Weird pregnancies or anything. But I promise, I won’t call you again.”

            “ _How’s Patrick?_ ” she asked. The sense of dread in Joe’s chest throbbed.

            “He’s fine,” Pete said, glancing at Patrick like he didn’t quite believe at. Patrick, who couldn’t hear what was going on on the other line, made a face at Pete. “Why would you-?”

            “ _He’s really fine, really?_ ” she asked. Pete was frowning, then.

            “Why would you ask me that?” he asked. “Did you get to know Patrick well?”

            “ _I just mean- he’s holding up okay, and everything?_ ”

            “That’s kind of a weird thing to ask me, so why ask it?” Pete asked, to yet another long silence.

            “ _The band’s been so quiet and late and they wouldn’t tell me what they did, Pete, I’m sorry, I never meant to-_ ”

            “They?!” Pete asked.

            “What?” Patrick hissed, glancing around at them.

            “ _I’m so sorry,_ ” Lauren said. She sounded like she was crying. “ _Fuck, I didn’t have your number and I didn’t know what to do but it wasn’t supposed to be like this, I never meant for any of this I swear!_ ”

            Pete’s eyes didn’t have their usual, subtle golden gleam to them. They were dark and angry.

            “What did you do?” he asked.

            “ _I made them,_ ” she whispered, barely audible to Joe, then. “ _I made the egrigors. And I’m so, so sorry._ ”

            “Where are you right now?” Pete asked. “Still in LA?”

            “ _I can text you the address._ ”

            “Do that,” Pete said, his voice nearly a whisper as well. “We’ll be there in an hour.”

            He hung up the phone, looked stoic and calm for approximately half a second. Then he threw his phone at the wall, hard enough to make it shatter, and screamed.

            “Holy shit, what?” Patrick asked. He put a hand on Pete’s shoulder, but Pete shrugged him off, hands shaking. “Pete!”

            “We found out where the egrigors came from,” Andy explained, wide eyed and dead voiced.

            “Oh,” Patrick said. He hesitantly put his hand back on Pete’s shoulder, started rubbing small circles. “Well. Better than releasing a sex tape, right?”  
            Pete laughed once, then turned and fell into Patrick.

            “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he whispered. He was shaking like he was crying, but there were no tears. _Folie_ kept playing in the background. “Fuck, I didn’t know, I didn’t-”

            “It’s okay,” Patrick said. “We’ll go talk to her, yeah? If Ryan’s right, and she’s not still being actively antagonistic, then we’re one step closer to getting these things gone, right?”

            Pete nodded, and Patrick kept holding him close. They stood like that until the song changed, and Joe cleared his throat.

            “Um, you kind of destroyed the phone that she was going to text her address to, didn’t you?”

***

            Andy volunteered to call the phone company, explaining to a slightly amused operator that Pete had shattered his phone, but they really, really needed the last text sent to it. There were quite a few security walls to get through, but eventually, they got the name of the place written down. Andy then also offered to drive, because everyone else looked distant or shaken or otherwise not up for the task of navigating the tangled freeways around LA. Pete looked like he might either commit a murder or vomit, and Patrick had his hands full with Pete, and Joe simply looked stunned. Andy didn’t exactly feel spectacular either, but he could hold himself together.

            “So,” he said, once they were already on the interstate. “Um. What do you remember about Lauren?” It was Andy’s nice way of asking “ _What did you do to make her this mad?_ ” Unfortunately, Pete seemed to gather the worst from it.

            “We dated,” he said through gritted teeth. “Sort of. It wasn’t exclusive.”

            “Did she know that?” Andy asked.

            “I don’t know,” Pete said. Andy didn’t turn to see if he was sulking, though it sounded like it. “We just. We were together for three months, I’d say? She was a college student, she said. We went on, you know, cemetery dates and stuff.”

            “Cemetery dates,” Joe said under his breath.

            “Yeah, to talk and shit, I- whatever,” Pete said. “She was pretty. She was sweet. She liked poetry and photography and rock climbing, but she was going into law school. I told her she should follow her heart. We talked… we talked a lot.”

            “And what did you say?”

            “I don’t know!” Pete burst out. “For fuck’s sake, do you remember what it was like then? I was all messed up over Mikey and taking three times the doctor’s recommended dose of Ativan. I’m lucky to have remembered her name, okay? I was high, and I told her I was in love with her, and I don’t even remember what she looks like.”

            Andy made a point of not looking at anyone in the car.

            “Anyone else have any fond Lauren memories?” Joe asked.

            “She threw a glass at my head when we broke up,” Pete said.

            “How was that breakup?” Andy asked.

            “I said we should probably just cut our contact off clean before I went on tour, because we weren’t that serious anyway. And then, I don’t know, she just went crazy. Said we were supposed to get married and how could I be so cold?” Pete sounded pretty cold as he recounted it, too.

            “So, she was mad at you after the… breakup,” Andy said.

            “And she decided to torture us,” Pete said. Andy finally looked back at him. Pete was staring out the window, eyes dull, looking at nothing.

            “She seems to feel bad,” Andy said. “She gave you her address, after all.”

            “Have we considered that it might be a trap?” Joe asked, and Andy’s hands tensed around the wheel.

            “Think about it,” Joe continued. “She was able to create the egrigors, and she’s invited us over to her house. What if… what if this is dangerous?”

            “We’re armed,” Patrick said. “What option is there but to go?”

            “We could at least look into it first,” Joe said.

            “No,” said Pete. “We’re doing this _now_.”

            His tone didn’t make Andy feel all that inclined to argue with him.

            They drove out of the central LA and into a cozy looking neighborhood filled with modest, suburban looking houses. In the midwest, they’d be starter homes, but here, Andy didn’t want to think about what they must cost to own.

            He slowed to read the numbers on the houses, and slowly pulled into the driveway of 227. The house, like all the ones around it, looked completely innocuous. A yard full of rocks and succulents stood in front of the little, one storied building, its garage door shut and all the curtains pulled tight over the windows.

            Andy got out of the car and immediately felt the harsh waves of sunlight hitting him. He squinted, waited until he heard the other doors slam, then said “Is this where she lived last time?”

            “No idea,” Pete said as he trudged up the drive past Andy. “I never went to her house last time.”

            Andy kept his thoughts to himself, and followed close behind Pete up the walkway. Pete banged on the door, and they waited.

            “Keep a hand on your weapon,” Joe murmured. “Just in case.”

            The door opened slowly inward, noiselessly displaying the dark, shadowy house within, and the soft, almost gaunt face of the girl behind it. She smiled every so slightly, the corners of her mouth turning up, but the look didn’t touch her eyes.

            “Pete,” she said, her voice a sigh. “You look- older.”

            “Well, time passed, so,” Pete said. “Can we come in?”

            “Sure,” she said. She opened the door minutely wider and stepped back into the shadows. Joe was on edge, but Andy didn’t feel especially nervous as he stepped into her house.

            Lauren, presumably, because she hadn’t actually introduced herself, flicked on the lights, revealing a house as bland and safe on the inside as it was on the outside. The place could have been on the market. It was so immaculate and boring, devoid of personal touches everywhere Andy looked and done entirely in varying shades of beige and cream. Lauren gestured to the couch, and Andy sat down, as did Patrick, but Pete and Joe remained standing.

            “Um, okay,” Lauren said. She sat down in a chair opposite the couch and took a deep breath. “So, like I told you on the phone, I am really, truly sorry.”

            “Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Pete said. His voice was flat, his hands were shaking, and Andy was desperately willing him not to try and strangle the girl right then and there, before they understood anything. “You made the egrigors.”

            “I did,” she said. She looked down at the floor, then up at all of them in turn, her face pleading, close to tears. “You have to understand - I know it was wrong, okay? I know I did the wrong thing. But I was so mad, and I-”

            “The beginning,” Pete growled. Patrick shot him a look, but he missed it. Lauren gulped, nodded, and fidgeted slightly.

            “Fall Out Boy was about to go on tour, back in ‘05,” she said. “And you, Pete, told me not to keep in touch with you, that you didn’t want to try for long distance. I asked why, for obvious reasons, and you said we were nothing serious, in spite of months of discussions implying that we were very serious. I was deeply upset, and you brushed it off. We fought, you left.

            “That part you were there for, but after, I was… upset. To say the least. I hadn’t even told me mom we were dating, because she would have lost it when she heard the age gap, but my little sister knew, and so did all my friends, because, you know, I was dating Pete Wentz. It was a huge thing. And they had all warned me and told me no good could come of it and I told them that they were wrong, that it was _true love_. I had to tell them all they were right after all.

            “At first I was just sad, just moping around and eating bowls of ice cream and feeling sorry for myself. But then college started, and-”

            “College started?” Andy asked. “I thought you were a college student?”

            “I had already been accepted, so I figured it counted,” Lauren said with a shrug. “I didn’t think you ever actually learned my name, much less my college status.”

            “Sorry, go on, I guess.”

            “I could focus on school some of the time, but I was still sad. And then sadness gave way to anger. I was… I was really angry. This guy that I thought I was going to marry apparently didn’t know my middle name. The anger made me bitter and mean and focused on what I wanted, and what I wanted then was revenge.

            “Half the time I was focused on school, on getting all of my work done perfectly and quickly and finishing the classes as fast and well done as possible. The other half of the time, I started practicing magic.

            “Pete told me about magic first. One night he was - you were acting weird, and you just said you wanted to show me something, out in our spot, and your eyes - your eyes started glowing. It was beautiful and insane and completely unbelievable and you said ‘Our little secret, right?’ He didn’t explain everything, but from then on, I knew magic was real, and I figured someone on the internet had to know something about it. I went looking. It was mostly bullshit, I’m sure you know, but I kept digging, and I’m a pretty good researcher - part of what makes me such a good student, actually. I eventually found some forums that didn’t look fake, dug down deeper into those, and then I heard a story about someone who accidentally ruined their own life by creating an egrigor. Someone who knew everything about them, all their flaws and insecurities, and knew just how to pick at them, like waterboarding that no one else in the world could even see.

            “It sounded fair to me, at the time. Going through a breakup is a similar experience, of having all your flaws made apparent, all the time, scratching at the inside of your skull. I just wanted that.”

            Lauren looked up then, eyes wide and pleading and, Andy couldn’t deny, sincere.

            “I never wanted anybody to get seriously hurt, I definitely never wanted anyone to get killed! I know they said - they told me they tried to, but I never - that wasn’t the plan. They were,” she stopped, laughed without humor. “They were supposed to be _mean_. The plan was - well, first the plan was to make one of just Pete. They’re not easy to make of other people if you don’t know their minds intimately, but one of the magic forums I was on told me there was a shortcut.”

            She paused, and Andy shrugged. Lauren looked a little disappointed.

            “Genetics,” she said. “I kept a hairbrush at your old apartment and there was definitely more than just my hair in it. So, I practiced and practiced and then I took out a hair, focused all my energy on it, and I summoned… Joe. Or, you know, a weird, demon version of him. And that obviously wasn’t the plan, so I went to try again, but then I got to thinking that…”

            She looked down at the ground and grimaced.

            “You thought that the only thing worse than me saying horrible things to myself would be my friends saying horrible things to me?” Pete guessed.

            “Well, yeah,” Lauren said. “It was a good idea. For revenge, anyway. It looked like there was a decent variety of hair in the brush I’d left behind, maybe all of you guys, so I started going to work.”

            “So that was how you made the other three?” Joe asked.

            “Other three?” she laughed. “Not at first, no. At first I was terrible at it. I couldn’t get all four of you right for years, if you’ve seen the time that’s passed. This is kind of complicated magic, I don’t know if you noticed. But I worked at it, and worked at it, and it was just impossible trying to make four separate egrigors, three of whom I barely knew, so I looked up a - well, sort of a magical cheat code.”

            “Thrice bound,” Patrick murmured. A hush swept over the room and Andy thought he heard a rattling noise from another room, as though wind had passed through the house. Lauren, however, looked baffled for the first time.

            “Thrice bound?” she said. “What does that mean?”

            “Us,” Patrick said, gesturing to the rest of them. “We’re thrice bound. You were the third, what caused us to have all the dreams.”

            “Dreams?” Lauren said. “It shouldn’t have had any noticeable effect at all, and I’ve got no idea what thrice bound means.”

            “Bound by pack, bound by your stupid curse, and bound by, um…” Pete looked angry and first, but he had grown confused. “Um, what was the third thing?”

            “Prophecy,” Joe said. “Ryan says we’ve got some big bad prophecy looming over us.”

            “Bound by pack, did you say?” Lauren said. She leaned forward. “What do you mean? What’s a pack?”

            “I’m shocked it didn’t turn up in your meticulous research,” Pete spat. “We’re asking you the questions.”

            “Am I on trial? I offered to help you?”

            “Help us?!” Pete shouted. His hands were shaking, and he still stood next to her. “Is that what this is? Didn’t decide to gloat some more?”

            “When have I gloated?!” she shouted. She stood up as well, taller than Pete when she stood next to him. “I’m sorry, do you want me to keep going or not?!”

            “Let her talk,” Joe said. He fixed a hard look on Pete. “Sit.”

            “No,” Pete said.

            Joe rolled his eyes and sat down on the couch next to Andy. Andy looked between Pete and Lauren, their hard stares, but Lauren sat back down as well. Pete remained standing, arms crossed over his chest.

            “It wasn’t a curse,” Lauren said. She had one hand in her hair, not quite tangled, but propping her head up. “It was just a spell. The magician I spoke to said it was, like, kind of a warrior bond, but all metaphysical. It should have no noticeable effects in the day to day, I was counting on that.”

            “I’m guessing it just gave us the dreams because we’re so connected now,” Andy said, before Pete could start shouting at her again. “But go on.”

            “Right, so before that, I was at the end of my rope. I had tried everything, absolutely everything, and I couldn’t get them right. It’s harder than you think, you know. Since the egrigors are emotion based, I had to keep really focused on just one emotion, and if I let my attention waver even a little, it threw everything off. If I had Andy’s hair and I was thinking it was Patrick’s, it was off. It was too hard. I did try another revenge method at one point, a curse, but I guess it just didn’t work, so-”

            “What curse?” Joe asked

            “A curse to make Pete act like his fans think he does,” she said with a wince. “It never took hold.”

            “Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Joe said. “But go on.”

            “I bound you four, and then I was able to take just one of the hairs, didn’t matter which, and make them. The set that you’ve met. They were my proudest achievement.”

            “Real charmers,” Pete spat.

            “Yeah, at first they seemed great. I flew out to where you guys were performing, snuck back and watched, and at first it was great. I had the tour thinking Pete Wentz was an asshole and for a second there, it felt like a dream come true. But then… well, Patrick- that is, not you, Patrick but-”

            “Not-Patrick,” Andy supplied dully.

            “Sure, Not-Patrick, he was rougher with all of you than I intended. I told them all to knock it off and be nicer, and they said they would.”

            “But they didn’t?” Joe guessed.

            “No,” Lauren said. “No, not at all. They used my room in Santiago as their waystation, I guess, their lair, for lack of a better term, and I went out and about to do stuff in the city. I was going to be out all day, but I came back in the midafternoon and there was - he was just dripping blood and laughing like a maniac and I never realized-”

            Lauren’s hand flew up to cover her mouth, tears glittering at the corners of her eyes. Andy could feel Patrick next to him, coiled and tense as he always was when Chile came up, but there wasn’t time to worry about it just then.

            “But you didn’t tell them to stop,” Pete said.

            “I did,” Lauren whispered. Her voice was choked then, filled with emotion. “It was just J- Not-Joe in the room, but I demanded that he let you go and stop it right now. I thought they had you, Pete, you see. And he said - he said I was stupid, and I clearly never had much foresight with anything, and how they had done all the planning for me. He said they realized the best way to hurt Pete was through… through Patrick.

            “I told him again to stop it right then, to end all this madness immediately and he said- he said awful things, but the gist of it is he refused. He grabbed my wrist and squeezed it till it cracked, and said if I didn’t like it I could go join Patrick.”

            “They can touch you?” Andy said.

            “I made them,” Lauren said with a miserable shrug. “They’re made of the five of us. They can touch any of us.”

            Andy and Joe exchanged a glance, but turned back to Lauren.

            “I haven’t had much contact with them since then. I’ve thought about trying to summon them a few times, but I know, well, they’ve made it very clear what will happen to me if I try to reign them in. I’m just - I’m so glad they didn’t kill you, and I’m so sorry I did this, and so sorry any of you got hurt.”

            Andy turned to Pete, still frozen in the same hard, walled off pose.

            “Is she telling the truth?” he asked quietly. Lauren had crumpled after finishing her story, and noiseless tears ran down her cheeks as she looked away from all of them. Pete, for his part, wasn’t looking at anyone either.

            “Yeah,” he said. “She is. Technically.”

            “Technically?” Lauren said. “I’m starting to remember the less great aspects of being with you.”

            “Sure you did it, and you’re sorry, and maybe you even actually want to help us,” Pete said. “But why are you sorry? Why do you want them gone? Because your creation turned on you.”

            “Actually, it was because they tortured and tried to murder someone adjacent to who I was actually trying to get my revenge on,” Lauren said. “And because I’ve never wanted anyone to be hurt like that, ever. For all of this, I’m terribly sorry to all of you.” She turned her gaze slightly, at Patrick, then down at the floor. “Especially to you, Patrick, I’m really, truly sorry.”

            Andy held his breath, muscles tense, waiting for Patrick to unleash his usual levels of fury on the poor girl. Patrick stood up, walked up to her chair, and held one hand out halfway, then let out a deep breath.

            “It’s okay,” he said at last. She let out a deep breath, and Pete made a disgusted noise.

            “It’s okay?” he repeated. “It’s okay? This bitch-”

            “Said, truthfully, that she didn’t know what she was doing and that she’s sorry,” Patrick said. “It’s not her fault any more than it is ours.”

            “Okay, well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Joe said. Behind Patrick, Lauren looked positively baffled by the turn of events.

            “Most people probably aren’t insecure about not having super strength,” Patrick said. When he turned to face them properly again, Andy could see that, more than anything else, Patrick just looked exhausted. “Having a clearer blame doesn’t make it any easier to get rid of these fucking things, but working together might.”

            “Patrick,” Pete sounded on the edge of implosion. “She’s the reason that you-”

            “That I what?” Patrick asked. “How exactly do you wanna finish that sentence? She’s our best chance of getting rid of them.” He turned to Lauren, voice soft. “Right?”

            Lauren let out a weak laugh and sank further back into her chair.

            “Maybe,” she said. I’m willing to try anything I can, but I don’t know how to do it myself. I’ve been trying to get rid of them for ages, but no luck.”

            A hideous thought occurred to Andy as she said that, and he jumped to his feet.

            “You said you tried a lot of times,” Andy said. He looked Lauren directly in the eyes and was struck by how young she was, by the open emotion on her face. Frustration and embarrassment and endless guilt as she looked up at him. “You said we’d met one set. And now you’re saying you don’t know how to get rid of them, yeah?”

            Lauren nodded, her face full of misery. Joe caught on the fastest, inhaling sharply.

            “But you did make others, didn’t you?” he asked.

            “I did,” she said. “Failures, and weaker than the ones that torment you, but yes. I practiced a lot of times.”

            “What happened to the practice ones?” Joe asked.

            “Ah,” Lauren said. “Well, I couldn’t figure out how to banish them, so I keep all of the rejects here.”

            The world seemed to sway beneath Andy’s feet, and he stuck his hand out to catch himself on the living room wall. It was dark in the room, no light but the thin streams of sun pouring through the windows.

            “How many?” Patrick whispered. The calm, reasonable voice from seconds earlier had gone, and Pete was beside him in the blink of an eye, one hand in his.

            “Forty seven,” Lauren said.

            Lauren’s pretty, manicured little house was in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. It should’ve been bustling with kids. For that matter, as she was a college student; her house ought to be a mess, filled with red solo cups and other twenty-somethings snoring on the ground. But in the moment it was horribly, deathly silent.

            Andy tightened his hand around his katana and took a deep breath.

            “Where are they here?” he asked. None of the others looked likely to ever ask anything ever again, though Lauren didn’t seem to notice the dramatic shift in mood.

            “I keep them in the basement,” she said. “I don’t think it’s inhumane or anything. They don’t actually need, like, food or stimulation or anything, and- are you okay?”

            All of them were standing, and they had all moved closer in together. Andy didn’t need any pack bond or aura reading to know that they were all on the same page, all ready to stick close and protect each other and not let anyone get taken and hurt again. Clustered together, he could feel the tremble of someone else’s arm against his.

            “Believe it or not we’ve had some negative experiences with these things,” Pete said. The acid was no longer in his voice, and he just sounded frightened. “The idea of being around forty-fucking-seven of them is, you know, a little unsettling.”

            “It’s perfectly safe for you to be here, I promise,” Lauren said. “I can’t banish them yet, but they’re all locked up and warded down there. There’s enchantments enough to hold them for a hundred years.”

            “Then why not lock up the others?” Joe asked.

            “They’re smarter,” Lauren said. “They wouldn’t go into the basement, and I wasn’t fast enough to place wards on a new location. They moved too quick.”

            “But hypothetically, if they were down there, they’d be stuck for good?” Joe asked.

            “Hypothetically,” Lauren said. “I mean, it’s more complicated. There are wards on the basement itself, but there’s cages within it. A physical and magical barrier, to make it more clear to me where I can and can’t go, and also, you know, having something physical to focus the energy is kind of like magic training wheels. Makes the whole thing easier.”

            “Why not the whole basement?” Joe asked. Andy was grateful that he had taken charge, as Andy still wasn’t sure how strong his voice would sound.

            “I go down to check on them,” she said. “Make sure the wards are still holding strong, and then….” she trailed off. The tiniest hint of pink shone on her cheeks. She glanced up, then sighed. “I haven’t had contact with the others, the main ones, so I go down there to check on how all of you are doing. To see if they’ve done anything really bad.”

            “Thoughtful,” Joe said.

            “Do you want to see them?” she asked.

            Andy met Joe’s eyes first, then Patrick, then Pete. All of them looked  much the same as he felt: apprehensive but curious.

            “First,” Joe said. “We should get something out of the way. I know we’ve all still definitely got some interpersonal stuff to work out, but are we on the same page? The five of us are all, first and foremost, trying to figure out how to get rid of the egrigors, and helping each other?”

            “Yes,” Lauren said, emphatic. Andy nodded, Patrick said “Yes,” and Pete gave a begrudging jerk of his head.

            “Great,” Joe said. “So don’t snap at her for a bit. In that case, I’m game to go take a look at the forty-seven others.”

            “This way,” Lauren said. She stood and walked through the living room, back towards the front door, where there was another door. Small, yellow painted wood, it looked fairly innocuous, but it looked enormous to Andy.

            “I should warn you now,” Lauren said. “It’s perfectly safe to walk down there, but the thing is that I’ve soundproofed it all, so it might sound a bit noisy when I first open the door.”

            It was good that she had given them a warning, because as soon as she opened the door, Andy had to cover his ears against the screaming.

            “PETE!”

            “JOE!”

            “PATRICK!”

            “ANDY!”

            “LAUREN I KNOW THEY’RE IN HERE I SWEAR TO GOD-”

            “LET ME AT THEM LET ME-”

            “LET US OUT!”

            “LET US OUT!”

            “LET US OUT!”

            Lauren grimaced down the dark basement steps, then back up at the guys.

            “They’re a little riled up!” she yelled over the sounds of screaming.

            “LET ME DIE!”

            “LET ME KILL THEM!”

            “I’m hungry!”

            “Patrick!”

            “Kill me!”

            “TELL PETE I’M GOING TO USE HIS TEETH FOR-”

            “SHUT UP!” Lauren shouted down. The screams died off, replaced by grumbling and moaning. She pulled a small chain hanging down from the doorframe, and a light turned on in the basement.

            “Well,” she said, sounding breathless. “Ready to go say hi?”

            “No,” Patrick said. Andy turned and he was white as paper, shaking his head back and forth so fast he might not even know he was doing it. “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. You guys can go ahead, but I- I am not going down there.”

            “It’s totally safe, I promise,” Lauren said. Pete pushed past her and grabbed Patrick’s hand.

            “You want me to stay up here with you?” he asked. Patrick shook his head.

            “No, no, you go ahead,” he said. “I’ll be _fine_ , Jesus, I just- I can’t go down there.”

            “Okay,” Pete said, and he let go. Patrick walked back into the living room and sat down on the couch, closing his eyes almost immediately. Pete and Lauren looked at each other like each of them had a lot to say to the other one, but they kept silent, and Lauren led the way down the creaky wooden stairs.

            The basement was huge, probably stretching the extent of the whole house. It was unfinished, made of stone, and against every wall there were cages with groups of Fall Out Boys in them. Closest to the stairs, another Andy was leaning up against the bars, his black eyes fixed on Andy.

            “You look scared,” he said. His voice was Andy’s, but the cadence was off, somehow. “Big, bad vampire, scared of a bunch of animals in their cages. Tell me, Andy, does the PETA supporter in you just wanna unlock all these cages and let us go?” He widened his eyes at the end of the sentence, and it seemed familiar, but Andy couldn’t put a finger on it.

            “Look at you, working it over in your brain,” he said. “They say you’re the smart one, sometimes. You always figure out the puzzle first. The strongest and the fastest and the smartest. It’s disgusting. Shame you’re too weak to take charge and actually save anybody.”

            “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you make the cut?” Andy asked, more to himself than expecting an answer.

            “Wrong hair,” the Not-Andy said. “She was used your hair, but she was thinking of the scared, weak bitch upstairs. Stupid, collateral damage. You should just let me at Pete, show him what that vampire strength was made for.”

            The creature leered at Andy, and he stepped backwards, hitting the bars on the other side of the narrow walkway that had been made between cages. Someone moaned, and Andy spun round to see a thin, sickly looking version of Joe curled up in the corner. He looked up at Andy, his black eyes glittering with tears.

            “Please,” he said. “Please, just kill us, I don’t want to live like this, don’t wanna live like this, I don’t wanna-” he cut himself off with a scream, burying his face in his knees. Andy turned to see the others, only to find that they had gone. He took off running, leaving the moans and pleas and jeers of the egrigors behind him, turning left, running down another corridor, and coming to the others where they stood in front of a cage near the back.

            “-one of my more embarrassing ones,” Lauren sighed. “I had gotten back from a party, one of the last I was invited to, and I was kind of high when I tried. I did make him, but the thing is, they’re whatever emotion you’re feeling strongest at the moment of creation. I tried to get angry, but instead-”

            “I’m soooo hungry,” the not-Pete said, flopped out on the ground. “You guys have, like, a sandwich? White Castle? Fuck, I could so go for White Castle right now. Get some sliders. Or pizza.”

            “A munchies demon,” Joe said. “And he doesn’t even have good taste.”

            “Hey, fucker, White Castle is great when you’re high,” Pete said.

            “Foooood,” not-Pete sang. “Angry Joe, why don’t you feed me?”

            “Go fuck yourself,” said the shadowy figure from the next cell over.

            “What’s wrong with him?” Joe asked.

            “He scared me,” Lauren said. “He wasn’t just angry, he was-”  
            “Horny, too,” not-Joe finished. His face in the light wasn’t like the Joe egrigor that Andy had come to know. It wasn’t an attractive version of Joe, it was animalistic, teeth bared and brows heavy over its eyes.

            “She still missed Pete too much that night,” Not-Joe said. “It transferred to me, and I want more than just revenge.”

            “Mistakes, like I said,” Lauren said, turning away from him. She started walking back the way they came, hisses and groans coming from the cages around them. “Most of the mistakes were confusions in emotion or hair. If I thought the hair was Pete’s, but it was actually Joe’s, it would look like Pete, but have Joe’s personality in its head. Ditto for Patrick and Andy. And, once, when I was really drunk, Pete and Patrick. It’s kinda hard to see hair color and texture on the best days, so once you’re out of it… Yeah. That’s one problem, and then oftentimes I was sad when I was trying to be angry. That’s why some of them are so…”

            “Why does it just hurt all the time?” Patrick’s voice rose out of a cage. “Please, I won’t hurt anyone, I just don’t want to be left in the dark with them again, I have his memories you don’t know what it’s like! She leaves me in the dark and it’s like I’m back there!”

            “This is cruel,” Andy whispered.

            “This is necessary,” Lauren said. “I’ve spent months trying to figure out how to get rid of them, and this is all I can do. I can’t just let them loose on the world, can I?”

            “But if they have our memories,” Andy said. As scared as he was, the closer he looked, the more scared all of them looked.

            “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears,” Lauren said.

            “Hey, Pete,” one of them jeered. Joe’s voice and his face, Andy noted, and this one didn’t look scared, leaning on the bars closest to them. “You wanna know what I would do with Patrick if I had been the one to get him? Want to know what I’d do with Joe?”

            Pete made like he was going to lunge, but Lauren grabbed his arm.

            “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t reach through the bars. That’s as far as the wards extend. All they can do from this distance is talk. I’ve got one last thing I wanted to show you.”

            She led them down another corridor, and Andy tried to tune out the comments that the egrigors were making. The threats and the laughter and the pleas to let them out, let them out, let them out. At the way back against a wall, there was a large cage with four figures in it, all sitting against the back wall.

            “Ooh,” Patrick’s voice came from the shadows, though it was definitely Not-Patrick, sounding more like the egrigor Andy knew than his Patrick, upstairs. “Lauren, baby, is it our turn to play now?”

            She flicked on the light, illuminating the four of them. They looked similar to the egrigors that were out and about in the world, but a little less harsh. Patrick was a little shorter, a little rounder, Pete a little less pale, and Joe nearly the same as reality. Against his will, Andy thought about what the egrigor had told him when he came into the basement, that he was the best at figuring things out. Still, he couldn’t figure out what this minute difference meant. Their insecurities were less noticeable, but why?

            “These were my final prototype,” Lauren said. “After I bound you, before I made the final ones. “Like the final ones, they were made all at once, with a spell patterned for the band rather than each of you individually. They’re the closest to the final project, but with one little problem.”

            “She didn’t differentiate us at all,” Patrick said.

            “So, we’re a little bit close,” Joe said. “Rather than being individuals, we share everything. Thoughts, emotions, plans, and power. Which means I know about the thing in the back of your drawer at home, Pete, and Patrick knows what you thought about Anna, Andy.”

            “They weren’t different enough,” Lauren said. “I didn’t think it would get to Pete the same way if they were too omniscient, and besides, since they reflect what the group sees rather than the individual, they didn’t look as different and… anyway, I wanted to fine tune it a bit.”

            “It’s not as though we’re the scary ones, right?” Pete’s voice spoke, but it came from all of their mouths at once, all four of them cocking their heads as one. Andy flinched back, resisting the urge to slam his eyes shut and never open them again.

            Lauren flipped off the light, and turned to them with a weary expression.

            “Shall we go back upstairs?” she asked.

****

            Pete was not going to strangle a girl. He wasn’t going to turn to this college student that no one even knew he knew and crush her windpipe under his hands and watch the light leave her eyes, wasn’t going to make her suffer and scream the way Patrick had. But he was going to fantasize about it as she made tea, bringing it out to them on a fucking blue willow patterned tray in the living room, and as she and Patrick exchanged sorrowful smiles. It was like, Pete thought, he felt bad for the violent bitch.

            No, he was just going to sit on the couch with his arms crossed and glare at her. The thing was that Pete didn’t even remember Lauren, not well, anyway. He might have expected this of another of his exes - god knew how many people he had cheated on and treated like dirt, and his and Morgan’s relationship, at the very worst, grew physically violent. So, he had broken Lauren’s heart. So what? Pete had his heart broken all the time, and he didn’t dedicate his life to making revenge demons.

            Yet for some reason, his whole band was treating Lauren like an ally rather than their enemy, and there was nothing Pete could do about it but stew and think about how badly he’d like to do things that would justify her hatred of him.

            “Have you tried banishing them?” Andy asked.

            “Only a few dozen times,” Lauren said. “I’ve got a lot of samples I can try it on, but it’s hard. Making them is easy now, but once they’re made, undoing them is like - I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like pulling apart a brick wall with your bare hands. It only gets harder with time too, even for the weak ones.”

            “Like the longer they’re around, the more set they are?” Patrick asked. Pete turned his full attention to Patrick as he spoke. Patrick, who had still been pale and shaky when they came upstairs, who only seemed to breathe fully when the door was shut, who still had the edge of a scar riding up from under the collar of his shirt. Patrick, the reason for whom Pete couldn’t forgive this girl, who was drinking her tea and ready to help. Pete recalled, with a twinge of guilt, how that morning, they’d been fighting over the people Pete had slept with. It wasn’t like Pete didn’t get it. Even counting the small spree of princesses that Patrick had fucked back into a story book, he hadn’t had _that_ much sex, and still, the thought of Patrick’s exes made Pete’s blood boil, a little bit. He couldn’t imagine his reaction if Patrick had had a list like his. Still, Pete was having a bad enough day. He wavered back and forth about whether or not to apologize until enough time had passed that it would have been weird to bring it back up.

            Patrick had reason enough to be upset, though, because one of Pete’s crazy ex-girlfriends had tried to kill them.

            “Kind of, yeah,” Lauren said. She looked at Patrick, and she frowned.

            “What?” he asked, a small, sad smile on his face. “Looking for signs of damage? It’s all covered by my clothes.”

            Pete didn’t correct him, looking pointedly away from the scar tissue on his collar.

            “No, nothing like that,” Lauren said quickly. “It’s just. I remember you more than I thought I did.”

            “I remember you too,” Patrick said, and even though Pete knew he wasn’t lying, for a second, he thought Patrick was just trying to make her feel better. “You made the best coffee in LA, and you were going to law school even though you wanted to be an English major. You used to keep rabbits, and you liked your pancakes with blueberries.”

            Lauren looked about as shocked as Pete felt.

            “How do you know that?” she asked. Patrick shrugged.

            “I didn’t remember that I did, but I’ve got a memory for little trivia,” Patrick said. “You were around. Guess I picked up some things way back then.”

            “Oh,” she said, looking, for some baffling reason, upset. “I guess I kinda just thought I was, I don’t know, Pete’s flavor of the week.”

            “You must not think very much of us,” Patrick said, and Pete noted with interest that Lauren didn’t say anything at all in response to that.

            “Do you guys know anything about banishing magic?” she asked.

            “No,” Joe said. “But I bet we know someone who does.”

            “Who?” Pete asked.

            “Ryan,” Joe said. “He’s our go-to guy, yeah?”

            “We can’t just call him for every problem we have,” Pete said.

            “No,” Joe said. “But for something this life-alteringly important, I think we can ring him up and see if he’s free.”

            “Sorry,” Lauren said. “Ryan?”

            “As in Ross,” Joe said. “Guitarist in Panic at the Disco, part time Greek oracle.”

            “I didn’t know he was Greek,” Lauren said mildly.

            “Well, somewhere back in his line,” Joe said. “Can you call him?”

            Pete could, of course. He had Ryan’s number, but he didn’t want to walk away from them. He didn’t want to leave his band alone with Lauren, didn’t want to let her inflict more damage where he couldn’t see it. He didn’t feel safe around her, and he sure as hell didn’t want to just leave her with Patrick where she could make everything worse.

            “Yeah,” Pete said. “Fine.” He stood up and started to leave the room, then patted his pocket and heaved a deep sigh.

            “I don’t have a phone,” he announced, interrupting someone in the midst of their strategizing.

            “You just called me this morning,” Lauren said.

            “Don’t have a phone anymore,” Pete said. “Patrick?”

            Patrick tossed Pete his phone, and Pete gave him an approximation of a smile. More of a grimace, he knew, but it was the best he could summon under the circumstances.

            “ _I thought that you might need me_ ,” Ryan said once he picked up. “ _What’s up?_ ”

            “We’ve got some magic questions,” Pete said. “Are you in LA?”

            “ _Nope_ ,” Ryan said. “ _Can you just ask me now? I’m a little busy with my own life, dude._ ”

            This day was just wound after wound attacking all of Pete’s sore spots.

            “I’m busy too,” Pete snapped. “Busy with forty-fucking-seven more egrigors than we thought there were.”

            “ _Holy sh-_ ”

            “Not to mention,” he continued. “I’m the reason you got anywhere, kid, so you could be a little nicer when we’re in the middle of a crisis. Can you get out here and help or what?”

            “ _I’m on my way,_ ” Ryan said, then hung up. Pete only felt worse in the silence that followed. He was acting like a dick, and he knew it, but it seemed that it was a perfectly valid response to the day itself getting meaner and meaner around him.

            Forty seven in the basement. Four out and following them. There were fifty one egrigors and one evil ex who had created all of them, and four exhausted, angry dudes in a band that weren’t equipped to fight them. The more Pete thought about their situation, the worse he felt.

            “Ryan’s on his way,” he said, yet again interrupting Lauren in the middle of a sentence. “He might know something about banishing.”

            “Well, as I was saying,” Lauren said, shooting a look his way. Oh, please, Pete thought. Let her snap at him. Let her give him a reason to gouge her eyes out and feel good about it. “I was thinking that, since I used your genetic material to create them, but it seems harder to destroy them, maybe all five of us doing the spell together would stand a better chance at successfully banishing one of these things. If we’re all up to trying it, that is,” she added, shooting a glance at Patrick.

            “Great plan, except none of us know shit about banishing. Or magic in general,” Pete said.

            “Don’t you guys, like, fight monsters for a living under a crappy pop punk band front?” Lauren asked.

            “You didn’t think it was such a crappy pop punk band when you said my lyrics had, and I quote, made you feel things you had never felt before,” Pete said.

            “You didn’t call me ‘that bitch’ when you said you could see yourself growing old with me, but the times they are a’changing,” Lauren said. “You don’t know anything about magic? Any of you?”

            “We know lots about pack bonds,” Joe said in a long-suffering voice.

            “And fae courts,” Patrick said.

            “Vampire politics,” Andy said.

            “I can do some basic magic,” Pete said. “I came up with a blend for Andy to partially replace human blood. Sympathetic magic, you know.”

            “It’s a start,” Lauren said. “And the guitarist for Panic at the Disco, he knows more about magic?”

            “Much,” Pete said.

            “Maybe the conservatives are right about this music,” she said. “Okay, so, then, do you have a basic sense of how magic works?”

            “Basic,” Patrick said.

            “Yeah, so it’s just intention and very, very solid focus,” Lauren said. “But, hypothetically, we’ve already kind of been doing group magic together, just in a non-consensual way on your part. If you willingly lend me your energy, I should, hypothetically, again, be able to concentrate it and focus it. You guys are apparently very powerful so-”

            “So it’s worth a shot,” Joe said, with a nod. “What do we need to do?”

            “Bad news is we need to be in very close proximity to one of them to do it,” Lauren said. “Like, in the same drawn circle, ideally.” She glanced at Patrick with another worried look, and Pete wanted to scream. She didn’t get to be protective of him, not after she was the reason he was afraid of going into the basement in the first place. However, where Pete was annoyed, Patrick just looked tired.

            “Yeah, I got it,” Patrick said. “But if you’re looking for magical power, I’m probably not going to provide much.”

            “There’s an inherent power in having the four of you together,” Lauren said. “Especially if you really are thrice bound. That’s quite rare. Besides, as intertwined as the power is - ugh, it’s kind of complicated. The raw power can be shared between the four of you, the four of them, but because you’re bound so tightly a lot of it is being housed in you, Patrick. Does that make sense?”

            “Not really, but I’ll go with it,” Patrick said. He looked so tired, and she just smiled.

            Fucking Lauren.

            Pete had met her at a cemetery, actually. He hadn’t said so out loud, partially because Joe would have mocked him endlessly, and partially because the longer he spent with her, the more he was remembering. He had gone to the graveyard one night for peace and quiet and instead he had found her, knelt by a tombstone, looking more like a painting than any human girl had the right to. In many ways, it was love at first sight. In another, crueler way, he wanted someone warm, and she was there.

            Some of the details were more hazy, while others were technicolor snapshots. He couldn’t recall if he spoke first or if she did, couldn’t remember most of what either of them said that first night, but he knew she had said “I’ll see you again, Pete,” at the end of the night, so sure and steadfast, and then she had kissed him. It had been nearly five in the morning, and he stumbled back into the band’s crappy, Hollywood apartment just before sunrise that day.

            It wasn’t even like Pete slept around all that much. He had the occasional one night stand, sure, but mostly it was that he fell in love a lot. A romantic slut: all he had to do was make some prolonged eye contact, and the spark in a pretty girl’s eyes could start a flashburn romance, a California wildfire of a love that left Pete a burnt out husk afterward.

            Not every romance was a fire that ate Pete from the inside out, just most of them. Enough that the memories of being burnt bled together, and to his shame and dismay, he barely remembered Lauren. He felt a little guilty, but less so each time he reminded himself that she had designed the creatures that tortured Patrick. He was stuck in a cycle of guilt and shame and anger and hatred.

            “So, then, if it’s okay with you guys, I’ll go set up the circle, do all the prep work downstairs, and I’ll come get you when it’s ready?”

            She didn’t seem like the kind of girl Pete would fall for, he thought as he looked at her. He remembered her hard, not with this people-pleasing smile and nervous finger tapping as she asked them for permission. She’d grown up, Pete realized. Thick black eyeliner had been replaced with professional brown, t-shirt and low slung jeans traded for a blouse and skirt. She had grown up and moved on, but still she hated him.

            “Sounds good,” Joe said, “You sure you don’t need any help?” He eyed the basement door meaningfully.

            “They won’t bother me,” Lauren said. “And I’m used to working alone. But thanks for the offer. It’s sweet.”

            Joe, the traitor, smiled at her, and she gave him a tentative smile in return before walking back down to the basement. In the few brief seconds that the door was open, the shouts of the egrigors in the basement drifted up to them. Out of the corner of his eye, Pete saw Patrick flinch, his eyes squeezing shut and his knuckles whitening as he clenched his hands into fists. Pete was furious, but with the wave of emotion came the familiar aftertaste of guilt, which was stupid because none of this was his fault. It wasn’t.

            Pete sat down next to Patrick and offered his hand out. Patrick took it and let out a deep breath. After a moment, when it became clear that he didn’t want to pull away, Pete tucked his feet up underneath him on the couch and curled into Patrick’s side.

            “Be nice,” Patrick said.

            “You know I hate being nice,” Pete said. Only mostly joking.

            “Try,” Patrick said. But he curled around Pete as well, which Pete decided meant that they weren’t fighting anymore. Good news for Pete. He could either fight with Patrick or the rest of the universe, but not both at the same time.

            “So,” Joe said. “Assuming she can’t hear us down there with all that sound proofing, what the ever loving fuck?” Pete realized with dismay that Joe was looking right at him.

            “Why are you asking me?” Pete asked.

            “She was your girlfriend,” Joe said.

            “She was not!” Pete said. “We never dated. Not officially, anyway.”

            “But, you know,” Joe said. “Clearly you meant something to her.”

            “Well, maybe she’s a delusional ex that thought that sleeping with me made her important, but we weren’t anything real.”

            “And you don’t remember anything helpful about her?” Joe asked.

            “She… she liked poetry,” Pete said haltingly. “Alan Ginsberg was her favorite poet, but her all time favorite poem was _The Old Astronomer_. And, um, once we went out for Korean barbeque.”

            _We took turns talking each other out of suicide_ , he didn’t say. Nor did he say _I think I once called her while I was high and told her I was going to marry her_. He didn’t say _I was her first_.

            Instead, he shrugged and said “You know, bits and pieces.”

            “You remember her favorite poem, but not why she wanted you tortured to death?” Joe asked.

            “Believe it or not, I’m shocked it was her, and I’m having a shitty enough day as it is,” Pete said. “I didn’t run over her cat. I didn’t cheat on her. I didn’t call her fat. Some people just do awful shit. Now do you want to keep interrogating me?”

            Patrick squeezed Pete’s hand a little too hard to be comforting. _Be nice_.

            “BASTARD!”

            “TRAITOR!”

            “WEAKLING!”

            “LIAR!”

            “Bring him down here and let me see him _squirm_.”

            Lauren pulled the door shut behind her, but not fast enough. She gave them a sheepish “What can you do?” smile, then sat on the arm of the couch, light and lithe.

            “I put a sedation spell on them,” she said. “Should kick in a few minutes from now, I swear.”

            “Thanks,” Patrick said, and Pete doubted if anyone else knew how much it cost him to say it. Pete could see it in Patrick’s aura, though, how much he hated any concession.

            “Can I borrow your phone again?” Pete asked Patrick, his voice low. He also tried to discreetly extricate himself from Patrick - sure, Lauren had forty-seven (really, fifty-one) windows to their souls, but there was an off chance that none of them had yet mentioned that he and Patrick were together, Even if she did know, she didn’t have to see. Pete felt possessive and nearly feral about Patrick, because Patrick was _his_.

            Patrick passed the phone to Pete with a nod, and Pete walked into the foyer, further away from Lauren. Even standing next to her made him feel hot with rage.

            “Hey, Ash,” Pete said. “I know I said we’d come in in an hour or so, but I think we’re gonna be a little late today. Neither of you are cleared to leave the hospital yet, right?”

            Ashlee sighed for a moment before she spoke.

            “ _No, not yet_ ,” she said. “ _But, Pete-_ ”

            “I know!” he all but screamed. “Look, I know I’m not the most responsible parent ever, but an emergency came up and Patrick and I will still come, just later, okay?”

            “ _Lemme guess - the world is ending_?”

            “No, not the whole world,” Pete said. “Smaller cataclysms. Just us. By the way, thanks for never, you know, trying to torture me and my friends. Or murder us.”

            “ _Um,_ ” Ashlee said. “ _You’re welcome?_ ”

            “Pete!”

            “I’ve gotta go - give Bronx a kiss for me?”

            “ _Anytime_.”

            Lauren had Pete fixed with an indiscernible face when he came back in. He thought, for a moment, that she was going to challenge him, but at last she just said “Come on, we’re all set.”

            The second walk down into the basement of horrors was better and worse. Better because it was quiet, because no one was screaming at Pete about how despicable, ugly, cowardly, and disgusting he was. Also, none of it was a surprise. He knew exactly what awaited him down there. It was worse, though, because the silence was heavy and eerie— a threat without a voice— and because Patrick was walking behind him. Pete could feel the anxiety radiating off his boyfriend in waves. But nothing shouted and no one jumped out, and the five of them made it to the bottom of the steps without incident.

            Forty-seven pairs of black eyes were fixed on them, varying expressions on their faces, but all of them looked dazed. Very angry sleepwalkers, Pete thought, then bit down on his lip to keep from giggling.

            “Wish we could shut the other four up like this,” Joe said, and Patrick let out one stiff laugh. Pete eyed the bars. He knew that they were more magic than metal, but he couldn’t help remembering how Not-Patrick had bent the metal bars of a bike rack like they were made out of playdough. These cage bars were thinner than those had been.

            “So,” Lauren said. Pete turned to here and kept his eyes fixed there, because as much as he loathed the girl, it was a million times easier than looking at the unflinching, unblinking black eyes of the egrigors surrounding them on all sides, looking hungrily at them from behind the bars of the cages. Though, Pete thought, even the sight of the egrigors would be easier to look at than Patrick’s bone-white knuckles, his electric aura. His best options were Lauren, or keeping his eyes shut.

            “So, what we need to do is, since there’s five of us - good number - everyone sit at equidistant points on the circle,” she said, “like a five pointed star. Then we’ll all join hands, and I’ll do the spell work, but if you really want to help out, focus hard on the idea of expulsion, or emptiness, and of removal. Sometimes visualization helps, so you can picture, I don’t know, mold or something being wiped away? Either focus on that, or keep your mind blank, and lend me your energy.”

            Andy caught Pete’s eyes with a look that very clearly said “this is bullshit,” but Pete turned his face away. Sure, it sounded like bullshit, but most magic did. He sat down on one side of the circle, closed his eyes, and held his hands palms up on his knees.

            They all joined hands in a circle, like some bad nineties movie about white girls summoning demons, then Lauren closed her eyes and began whispering to herself too quietly for Pete to make out the words. He looked from side to side, to Patrick on his left and Joe on his right, and realized he was the only one with his eyes open, then forced them closed. Though Pete would be the first to admit that he didn’t know nearly enough about magic to help, he could feel it running through his palms, a warmth like a current, energy that was nearly overwhelming.

            “Think about something disappearing,” Lauren said, her voice barely audible but fierce in its intensity. “Think about the hole in the world where a human being would fit.”

            Pete tried to focus, heard a hollow whistling around him like wind, but he didn’t know how to picture the absence of something. The warmth in his palms felt more like heat, nearly painful, but he didn’t let go.

            Lauren gasped, and a shock hit Pete in both his hands, making him drop them. He opened his eyes again to see that everyone had been knocked back, and Lauren stood up. She ran down one of the makeshift halls of cages, then swore.

            “Nothing?” Joe guessed. Lauren walked back to them, her shoulders slumped.

            “Nothing,” she agreed. “Want to move this party back upstairs?”

            And Pete didn’t, not really. He didn’t want any part of this anymore. He wanted to go be with his son and his boyfriend, wanted to go home and not have to worry, but that wasn’t an option. So, he climbed the stairs and followed her up.

            Most of the afternoon was spent in Lauren’s living room. She handed out books on the magic she had been practicing for the four of them to read over, and soon they were all bent over in silence. Once it seemed like things really had settled down for the time being, Pete cleared his throat.

            “I need to head out,” he said. “With Patrick. Can you guys hold things down here?”

            Joe gave Pete a mock salute, and no one commented on the fact that Pete hadn’t addressed Lauren, which was a relief. Patrick stood up stiffly with Pete, and they left in silence.

            “Bronx?” Pete said, just managing an exhausted smile. Patrick grinned back at him, tired but sincere.

            “Bronx,” he agreed, and they drove off.

            Visiting hours were close to ending, but a flicker of Pete’s eyes and they were given as long as they wanted. The two of them sat in a secluded section of the maternity ward, the infant sound asleep in Patrick’s arms while they talked in hushed voices. They had finished the nursery at their home, they put car seats in their cars, and everything was set. Bronx had a slight fever, something the doctor assured them was totally normal, but he would be there for another two nights.

            Enough time to hopefully work things out with Lauren. The further away he was from her, the more optimistic Pete felt. Maybe, just maybe— though he didn’t dare to hope out loud— Pete thought they might get rid of their egrigors before they brought the baby home.

            “He still doesn’t feel real,” Patrick said. He hadn’t spoken much, mostly just stared at the wrinkled bundle in his arms in awe, like he was looking at a natural wonder.

            “I know,” Pete said. “Hard to believe that - shit, dude, we’re dads.”

            “Don’t swear in front of the fucking kid,” Patrick said, smiling a little, but not tearing his eyes away from Bronx for even a second. “And you’re the only dad on paper.”

            “Don’t be like that,” Pete said. “You’re his dad too, and he’s going to have the weirdest time ever trying to explain his family tree.”

            Patrick just smiled, and rocked the kid in his arms very, very gently. For the first time all day, Pete felt relaxed and sort of happy, and for a few hours, while the sun sank outside, he tried to forget about Lauren.

            Then, of course, the good times ended, and they had to go back to her house. Joe looked up at them, tossed Pete a book, and said “Get to work.”

            At some point during the night, people started drifting off. Joe and Andy were leaning against each other on the couch, Patrick was slumped on the floor, and Lauren was still awake in the armchair next to Pete, but every time she blinked, it looked a little harder for her to open her eyes.

            Pete knew he couldn’t sleep, and a part of him knew he should probably offer to stay up while she slept. Instead, he turned from her and refocused on the late 19th century spiritualism text he had been reading.

            She fell asleep eventually anyway, and Pete closed his eyes, letting himself drift on the hazy line between sleep and waking while the sun rose, trying to ignore the distant thumping coming from the basement like an unsteady heartbeat.

            The morning continued to be a haze of research, not that any of it seemed that helpful to Pete. As far as he could understand in his readings of egrigors, they were a very inexact science that was too volatile to be thoroughly researched. He noted, with no small amount of unease, that according to the books he was going through, no one had ever taken this branch of magic as far as Lauren had.

            Hell hath no fury indeed.

            When the morning came and went with no sign of Ryan, Pete started to feel antsy. He left the house a few times - to pick up a new cell phone, to visit Bronx again. No one was rooted there, but always at least two of them were keeping vigil in Lauren’s living room, going over online articles or bits of magic and never once talking about the underlying problem. Pete called Ryan at long last to ask where the hell he was, and Ryan told him he was sorry, but he’d be in early the next morning.

            That was the start of the third day sitting with Lauren, working with her and trying not to rip her limb from limb. Andy jumped out of his seat before Ryan could even knock on the door.

            “Hello, kids,” Ryan said, walking into the house without taking off his big, round sunglasses. “You’re all here nice and early. How’s that whole forty-seven demons thing going?”

            “Miserable,” Pete said. “I see you took your time getting here.”

            “And I did it just to annoy you, not because I was busy with my own full time job and the fact that flights to Los Angeles are expensive or anything,” Ryan said. He draped himself over one arm of the couch and let out a sigh. “So. Where are the monsters?”

            “In the basement,” Lauren said. “Um. Mr. Ross?”

            “Ryan’s fine,” Ryan said. “I didn’t throw my life away on a rock band just to get called Mr. Ross. Wanna take me down there for a closer look?”

            “It’s not the best idea,” Lauren said. “They’re not sedated right now, and they can’t get out, but they’ll - I’m afraid they’ll say some pretty horrible stuff about you.”

            “Can’t be worse than what people say on the internet,” Ryan said bracingly. “Let’s see the worst of it, then.”

            “If you’re sure,” Lauren said, pushing herself out of the chair. She opened the basement door - she heaved as she did, like it was heavy, though it looked like a normal door - and immediately the voice came from the basement.

            “Ryan-”

            “Ryan-!”

            “Just a glutton for suffering, pretty boy?”

            “Ryan, please, please let me out-!”

            Ryan descended into the basement without any hesitation and let the door swing shut behind him.

            “What would they say to Ryan?” Joe asked. “I mean, none of us has anything horrible on him, right?”

            “We’re all capable of thinking some pretty awful shit,” Patrick said. “But he shouldn’t have to be down there long, anyway.”

            Pete wanted to listen at the door and see if he could discern anything at all. He knew that the egrigors were the egrigors, and whatever they were saying was sure to be awful. He liked Ryan, sure, but he’d thought awful things about everyone at some point, like Patrick had said. Pete also felt so protective of Ryan. He was just a kid with too much weight on his shoulders that Pete had been being a massive dick to. Ryan who looked up to them, whose dad hadn’t even died that long ago… Pete dropped the book he had almost been reading. He couldn’t focus with his stomach twisting in knots of anxiety, thinking of all the awful things the egrigors probably were saying.

            Sure, Ryan couldn’t be touched by them, and that was a relief, but Pete was tired of this ache in his chest, the knowledge that he was hurting someone, no matter how indirectly.

            “What are our odds on Ryan actually figuring this out?” Joe asked.

            “Figuring it out, or fixing it?” Pete asked. “I’d say very good on one, and very poor on the other.”

            “Fantastic,” Joe said. “Then I suggest we go home when he does.”

            “Sounds like a plan,” Patrick said. After all their time there, Patrick was all baggy eyes and stretched nerves. Even his aura was tense, and Pete kept waiting in dread for the moment when it would snap.

            Along with every other emotion - and Pete was feeling a lot - he was accompanied by the sense of hopelessness, now they had time to really process what was going on. They had found where the egrigors had come from, and he thought that would be the end of it. Instead, there seemed to be even less chance of fixing things than before. It was exhausting.

            A few minutes passed before the door opened again, and Lauren and Ryan emerged. Ryan slammed the door shut behind him and slumped against it, eyes closed, taking in slow, deep breaths. He leaned there for a second - crying? It looked like his cheeks were wet, but Pete couldn’t be sure. He then stood up, straightened himself, and walked over to the band.

            “Okay,” he said. “So, my professional opinion - bearing in mind that I’m not actually a professional and I don’t know why you guys come to me for magic advice - is that you’re kind of fucked. I’ve never seen someone this adept at this type of magic, and even the first and the weakest of these creatures could pose a serious threat.”

            “Thanks for softening the blow,” Patrick said.

            “Well, there is some good news,” he said. “Lauren’s a natural magician in general, so once she learns how to banish, you guys’ll be great. Unfortunately, magic is about the one aspect of life where destruction is more difficult than creation, and she has no practice.”

            “You said she was adept at magic, though,” Andy said. “I- sorry, Lauren, shouldn’t it be easy for her to learn?”

            Ryan frowned. He sat down cross legged on the floor and pressed his fingertips together, pulling faces as he thought.

            “How to explain this?” he mused to himself. “Um… okay, you guys are from the Midwest. You know basketball? Yeah, don’t give me those faces, okay, so if two basketball players have a kid, that doesn’t guarantee their kid will be good at basketball. It’s the same with magicians - they can come from anywhere. But, if someone were born with genetics that made them really tall, they’d have a leg up in the game, yeah? And if that same tall person practiced a lot of things adjacent to basketball, like running and hand-eye coordination as a kid, they’d be even more primed to become really good at basketball. Sub in mindfulness and meditation for running and hand-eye coordination and a natural… spark, in the place of being tall, that’s Lauren. She’s predisposed to be a magician, but she doesn’t have to be - her odds just increase of her being good at it, if she tries.”

            Pete glanced at Lauren as Ryan was talking and could see in her face that this was all just as new for her as it was for him. Her disoriented expression gave him some small manner of petty satisfaction. Maybe he wanted her to suffer just like she had wanted him to.

            He blanched at the thought and tried to shake it away.

            “Now, going with the basketball metaphor, imagine nobody in the world plays basketball. Or, at least, very few people,” Ryan said. “But say this tall, athletic person heard about it and wanted to make a three-point shot. And they practice three-point shots all day, every day, after reading up on the theory of them first. They keep focusing and working out but just practicing their three-point shots. As good as they can be at basketball, and as formidable as they are at three-point shots, they might have no clue how to dribble, or lay-up, or block someone. They’ve just never practiced, they don’t yet have the muscle memory. It can be learned, but they don’t know it yet.

            “That’s where we are with Lauren and the egrigors. Except maybe wards are her free-throws, because they’re similar enough that she can create them, even if she can’t do much else yet.”

            There was a pause, Pete catching his band members’ confused eyes in turn, then looking back at Ryan.

            “So, with the basketball metaphor - isn’t dribbling easier than three-point shots?”

            “Look, it’s not a perfect metaphor,” Ryan said. “Don’t get hung up on the details. The point is these things are possible, but there’s a major problem. She can’t banish anything quickly, and as soon as she learns to, well, our friends who aren’t in cages are going to know about it. They’re connected to her mind just as much as yours. And if they find out she can banish them, they’ll stop her, and since they can touch her-”

            Ryan flung his hands up in the air.

            “It’s not an ideal situation, is what I’m saying,” he said.

            “Well, once she figures out how to banish them, we can guard her?” Joe said.

            “Sure,” Patrick said. “That one always works great.”

            “There’s another, ah, kind of major problem,” Ryan said. “It’s related. They’re all connected to her mind as well, created by her. Which means they inherited Joe and Andy’s strength and speed, and they have access to all your inner thoughts, and they might - just might - be able to harness some minute amounts of magic. Nothing too terrible, it’s just- um, what I’m trying to get at is your wards are decaying at a faster rate than you think they are.”

            “How fast?” Lauren asked.

            “Not too bad,” Ryan said, his voice soothing. “They’ve only gone down a little since I’ve got here, and you update them every month, right?”

            “Yeah, but- you can tell the difference just from when you arrived?” Lauren asked. Ryan paused, and he grimaced.

            “Out of curiosity, Pete, you called me two days ago,” he said. “You four - you haven’t been here the whole time since then, have you?”

            “No,” Pete said. “No, we’ve left a couple times for, you know, clothes and checking in on the baby.”

            “But you have been here most of the time?” Ryan asked. “Like, all five of you?”

            “Most of the time, yeah,” Joe said. Pete’s throat suddenly felt a little too thick to respond.

            “Ah,” Ryan said. “I see. Right.”

            “Ryan,” Pete said, a low warning.

            “No need to panic, or anything,” Ryan said. “But just in case, you four should leave. In groups of two. Immediately.”

            “Immediately?” Andy echoed.

            “Yeah, on the double,” Ryan said, walking over to the front door. “Preferably not grouping Pete and Patrick together, while you’re at it.” He had walked outside, and Pete followed after him. He felt strangely calm, like his body was waiting to be sent into full on panic mode for a more convenient time.

            “See, these things are tied into all five of you, which means that when you’re all five together, all of the egrigors are stronger, and if they’re stronger, the wards on them start wearing down quicker, and if they’re moving at a faster than average rate of magical decay, then what I’m telling you is all forty-seven nightmare creatures could break out at any moment.”

            Pete threw himself into the nearest car, Andy climbing in the passenger seat beside him. Pete didn’t immediately turn the car on, but instead rolled down the window. Ryan jogged up to them, a chagrined expression on his face while Joe and Patrick’s car peeled out of the driveway.

            “Look, Pete, it’ll be fine,” Ryan said. “I promise. We’re just doing this as a precaution, I’ll help her get the wards back up and solidify them, and we’ll call you with the all clear, okay?”

            “You promise?” Pete asked, and Ryan nodded.

            “Nothing bad is going to happen, none of those things are going to get out,” he swore. Pete was almost reassured, but even though Ryan wasn’t lying, Pete had seen enough of life to know that people could believe something and still be horribly, violently wrong.

            There was no time to mention that, and then they were flying, out of the driveway and down the road, heading the opposite direction of Patrick and Joe with a sick, sticky feeling in his stomach.

            “He’s going to be fine,” Andy said after a minute.

            “Maybe,” Pete said. “But we don’t know he’ll be safe, Or that you, or Joe will, because aside from all the monsters that are right on the brink of escaping their cages, there’s also four that are still on the loose, in case you’d forgotten.”

            “I hadn’t,” Andy said. “And I’m properly terrified, I promise. You don’t have to work harder at making me freak out!”

            Pete hadn’t expected Andy to raise his voice. He tore his eyes off the road for a moment, and saw that Andy’s eyes were mostly closed, his fingers gripping the edges of the seat, and his aura was throbbing in neon, sharp edged fear. And Pete felt a familiar surge of guilt, because -

            “I didn’t know you were freaked out about them,” he said.

            “How could I not be?” Andy asked. He was staring down at the floor mat, so Pete reluctantly focused on the road again. “They could tear me to shreds and sew me back together again, do you know that? Have you really thought about… I’m more resilient than a human, yeah, but to the right person that just means you can do worse shit to me without killing me. And since they can’t kill us,” he laughed without any mirth. “They could do whatever they wanted to me, nearly.”

            “I’m sorry,” Pete said. His voice was heavy with misery.

            “It’s not your fault,” Andy said. “It’s not any of our faults, not even Lauren’s, all the way. I want to hate her too, but she fucked up. Now we’re all just stuck with it.”

            They were quiet for a while, with no noises but the roar of the motor and the sound of asphalt under their tires.

            “They wouldn’t do the same thing to you that they did to him,” Pete said. Like that made it better.

            “It’s just a shitty situation,” Andy said. “Let’s not dwell on it, okay? Not to jinx it, but maybe for once things will get done without everything descending to shit.”

            “Well, now it’s definitely jinxed,” Pete said.

            At some point, he turned on the radio. The suburbs disappeared and were replaced by desert, and the sun hit its high point in the sky. Still no one had called.

            “No news is good news too,” Andy said. “They would’ve called if something had gotten out.”

            “Maybe,” Pete said. “Should we circle? I don’t wanna get too far away.”

            Andy nodded tersely, and they turned around at the next exit. Their whole friendship was just based on roads, Pete thought. Most of the time they spent together was in cars.

            When Pete’s phone finally rang, he nearly swerved off the road in his haste to answer.

            “Ryan,” he breathed.

            “You should be good to come back,” Ryan said. He sounded exhausted, but not like he had recently been in mortal danger, which Pete took as a good sign. “I put my own signature in the wards and - you know, all the typical magic bullshit. I’m not that good at it, but I’m not as tangled up in your weird collective Fall Out Boy conscious, so it should hold. I wouldn’t stay here long, but you can regroup.”

            “Thank you,” Pete said fervently. “Jesus, thank you so much. We’re on our way.”

            “Anytime,” Ryan said, then hung up.

            “Looks like we’re good,” Pete said to Andy, and Andy let out one huff of breath.

            “One thing we don’t have to worry about,” he said.

            The two of them arrived back at Lauren’s now familiar bungalow soon after, greeted by sun glittering off the pavement and Ryan leaning against the garage door looking ridiculously pleased with himself.

            “My work here is all done,” Ryan said. “For the low, low fee of please try not to have an emergency this big while I’m on tour again, sound good?”

            “You’re a life-saver,” Pete said, only a little begrudgingly.

            “I do my best,” Ryan said, but he smiled at Pete in a way that meant they were still good, like they always were.

            “Do you think they’re going to get out?” Pete asked. “Really?”

            “I don’t know, to be uncomfortably honest,” Ryan said. “The wards are strong, but the only thing that’s usually permanent with monsters is death. Or, in their case, nonexistence. I don’t know what to make of it. Once Lauren figures out how to banish them… well… that'll get rid of them for good.”

            He paused, like he was going to say something more, then stopped. Pete squinted at him through the shimmering sun.

            “What?” he asked.

            “Nothing,” Ryan said, sending a jolt running up the back of Pete’s skull. _Liar._

            “Ryan,” Pete said, his voice gone hard again, and Ryan flinched.

            “Nothing,” he insisted, lying again.

            “Why won’t you tell me?” Pete asked.

            “You don’t even know what I have to say,” Ryan said.

            “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be asking you. What aren’t you telling me?” Pete asked. He felt a heat burgeoning in his chest, somewhere near his sternum, and felt it rise within him, the glowing sensation that was heating him up from the inside out, and it was all he could do to keep the glow from spreading to his eyes, to keep himself from suggesting to Ryan to keep going. He wasn’t going to charmspeak his friend, not so long as Ryan was cooperative.

            “There’s a chance that there’s another way to get rid of them, but it isn’t a sure thing, and it’s dangerous, so I didn’t mention it,” Ryan said. He spoke all in one breath, hurried to get it out.

            “What’s the other way?” Pete asked.

            “Keep your voice down!” Ryan hissed. He sighed. “There’s a chance that if the creator if the enchantments was to die, the enchantments— in this case the egrigors— die with it.”

            Pete was frozen, feeling suddenly airless.

            “If Lauren died-” he began, and Ryan shook his head.

            “Pete, I didn’t want to tell you because I don’t want you to do something stupid,” he said. “If I’m wrong, if Lauren were to die and the egrigors didn’t die with her, then you’d be stuck with them forever. Do you get that?”

            “Yes,” Pete said. “But if there’s a chance-”

            “I would strongly encourage you not to think that there might be,” Ryan said. He sounded, in that instant, much older than he was, older than Pete, and more like a father than some kid in a band. Pete couldn’t see Ryan’s eyes behind the gleaming sunglasses on his face, cutting his face off entirely. Even his aura seemed muted and quiet, giving away nothing at all.

            Some part of Pete wanted to keep arguing, though he couldn’t imagine why. It would be so much easier, of course, but. But. They kept saying “die” and not “kill,” and it wasn’t though she was just going to happen to drop dead. If anything, Pete should be thinking about how to make sure she wasn’t killed. The idea of the egrigors following them around forever was almost as horrifying as the other option was appealing.

            Before Pete could start really thinking about the morality of what he was considering, he heard the distant sound of another car and let out a breath he hadn’t even known he was holding. Joe and Patrick pulled back in, and Patrick got out with a half-smile aimed at Pete.

            “You’re okay?” Pete said, and Patrick rolled his eyes. Then, before he could step closer, before he could so much as answer back, something rushed at him, blurred in Pete’s vision.

            Pete found that he had lurched towards Patrick without even thinking about it. He heard the sound of his shoes slamming against the pavement like it was coming from very far away.

            Something was on top of Patrick, pinning him down the ground, something that— Pete could recognize even from behind— was one of the copies of himself.

            There was no time to shout or do much of anything. The Not-Pete was thrown backwards onto the driveway, and Patrick was scrambling backwards, glasses gone, hand clasped over his neck with blood oozing from between his fingers. It had been seconds, but his hat was gone and his shirt was torn, and he made no noise, just stared forward blankly, as though sightless.

            Pete’s mind continued to work slower than his body, and before he knew it he had thrown himself on top of the creature, and then recoiled in disgust. The thing grinning beneath him wasn’t just a wrong version of himself. This Pete had long, jagged teeth gleaming with red, eyes that were somehow slanted, pointed ears, and veins of silver running visibly just under his flat, almost plasticine skin. This Pete didn’t look like he was more attractive, but like a monstrous version of Pete. A fae version.

            “The bitch never notices when I’m gone,” he whispered, the words coming out distorted and hissed through his mouthful of teeth and blood. “I didn’t hurt ‘im, though. Just wanted a taste.”

            He didn’t disappear, like the other egrigors always did, but flickered, like bad reception. His gruesome face twisted like he was in pain, and then he blinked out of existence, out from under Pete’s hands. Pete was sent sprawling on the ground, and he spun around, looking for the creature. It stood at the top of the driveway, arms held up in surrender, and facing Ryan.

            “Put me back in my cage, Mr. All-Seeing,” he said. Ryan grabbed him and led him away.

            Pete scrambled back over to Patrick, sitting still and staring at the place where the egrigor had landed.

            “Patrick,” Pete said. “Patrick!”

            “Give him a second,” Andy said, voice soft, hand on Pete’s shoulder. Pete shrugged him off and reached forward - to touch Patrick, to reassure him, to bandage his neck, to just fix it, somehow. Andy grabbed him before he could, holding him still. Patrick could have been a statue were it not for the blood still trickling out from between his fingers, scarlet against his pale skin. Pete couldn’t see the wound on his throat, could only recall the mouth full of too many sharp teeth, stuffed too full in the mouth of the thing, cartoonish against Pete’s human looking lips. Their egrigors couldn’t kill them, but what if these messed-up ones could?

            “I need to see if he’s hurt!” Pete said, trying to pull away from Andy. “Patrick!”

            “Don’t shout at him,” Andy pleaded. “Just give him a second!”

            Pete suddenly went still as something his brain had snagged on earlier caught up to him. The monstrous one, when he held up his hands - Ryan had grabbed him. Ryan had touched him.

            Pete felt like he could easily be the same as Patrick. He could descend inside himself and never come back out, so overloaded on horror as he was. Becoming a shell of himself would be as easy as stepping backwards and falling off the edge of a cliff.

            “Ryan,” he whispered.

            “I know,” Andy said. “Patrick? Can you move your hand for us?”

            “Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s going to be fine!”

            Pete knew who it was before he turned. Patrick’s voice, Pete thought, never seemed to come from Patrick’s own mouth anymore.

            Not-Patrick - the original bastard, all sleek blond hair and smug grin - had Joe pinned very firmly against his chest, one of his hands covering Joe’s mouth and the other gripping his left hand, holding it up high. The other three stood at his sides, a now familiar sight.

            “Hard to get your attention when it’s not about your boyfriend,” Not-Pete said. “But we had such an excellent diversion just set up for us, and we couldn’t help but take advantage of it.”

            “Don’t,” Pete said. He wasn’t really shouting or pleading anymore, run dry as he was for terror and pain. “Please, don’t- don’t take him with you, don’t do this, I’m _sorry_ , for fuck’s sake!”

            “I think the eight of us are a little past what you’ve done to poor little Lauren,” Not-Pete said. He stepped closer, and Patrick made an almost imperceptible noise behind Pete. At least he was responding again.

            “Then why do anything?!” Pete asked. “It’s all about revenge, right?”

            “It started about revenge,” Not-Pete corrected him. “But now… how to put it. You’re familiar with the story of the scorpion and the toad? I’m afraid to tell you that now this is simply in our nature.”

            “Don’t,” Pete said again. He kept staring into his own reflection’s black eyes, dark pools that showed none of the emotion on his face. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t make eye contact with Joe, not now. It was bad enough seeing the terrified sparks emanating from his aura. “Please, stop. I’ll do anything.”

            “Really?” Not-Pete said, raising one eyebrow. “Would you trade? Joe for Andy? Ooh, or better, Joe for Patrick? If I can’t kill him, I think I’d like to get to know him a little better.”

            “Why not me?” Pete asked.

            “Oh, Pete, you and I both know that at this point, torturing you would make you feel _better_ ,” Not-Pete said. “You and your little martyr complex.”

            Not-Patrick stepped backwards, dragging Joe with him, and Joe let out a muffled protest from behind the hand on his mouth.

            “Please! Fuck, don’t take him with you!” Pete finally shouted.

            “Pete,” Not-Pete said, smiling just a little. “When did I say anything about taking him away?”

***

            Patrick could feel himself struggling back to himself, like he was drowning. He had been fine for so long. In fact, not that anyone cared, but he had been relatively fine all fucking day in spite of the forty-seven new egrigors that had just been discovered. Despite being able to hear them screaming at him up the stairs, walking down into their midst, and fleeing after being told they could all escape at any minute. So, all things considered, Patrick thought he had been doing pretty fucking well. It wasn’t as though any of the others had been locked up with them for fourteen hours, and none of them had been taken by them in the dark woods and left to drown in mud. He had been doing well, and then.

            He had even done fine when the nightmare version of Pete had launched at him. With the black eyes and prominent faery features and huge, sharp teeth, it was every bad dream Patrick had ever had rolled up into one. Even as it sank its teeth into Patrick’s neck, Patrick had reeled back and kicked Not-Pete in the stomach with as much force as he possible. But as he forced it off, the teeth had torn at his neck, and blood had gushed, and every bad memory of vampires and egrigors and all the horrible monsters they faced came back as one. It was as though Patrick was back in the basement and the knife aimed at his neck had finally struck home. He was frozen, he was dying, and death would be a relief compared to the constant and electric stream of fear that coursed through him like shock after shock.

_Cowardcowardworthlessweak._

            He had just enough presence of mind to think to himself that he wasn’t going to fucking cry, and then he felt faintly aware of his muscles locking up, one by one. He saw the world in front of him as though through a pinhole camera, all black surrounding the vision, fuzzy and far away. He saw Pete land on the ground, another one on top of him, the crimson and white of blood on teeth. Pete’s face, brown eyed and frantic and too close to his own, scared, though Patrick couldn’t help him. He couldn’t move, could barely breathe.

            But he could feel it when the others came. He felt it more than he heard it or saw it, like ice cold water being dumped all over him. They were behind Pete and Andy and he knew it, but he couldn’t say a thing to warn them. He did see when Not-Pete stepped forward and a fresh wave of fear crashed over him to the tune of _no no please no_.

            It was like swimming in ice water with nothing to do but kick to the surface. He focused on where he was, on the warm blood under his left hand and the gritty pavement under his left, the feel of the pale sun on his head. Yes, it was sunny, it was light out, he was in California. Joe, Joe was in trouble, needed his help.

            Patrick resurfaced with a gasp that nobody heard, just in time to see Not-Pete smirk and Joe’s eyes go wide. Joe pulled against Not-Patrick’s grip, but was held fast.

            “Just,” Pete was trying to reason, his voice coming to Patrick like he was listening from underwater. “Just let him go. You don’t have to do this.”

            “We’re going to let him go; be patient,” Not-Pete said cheerfully. Patrick shifted his weight just slightly, but then everyone’s eyes were on him.

            “Aw, poor baby,” Not-Joe said. “Are you still scared?”

            In truth, Patrick couldn’t have thought of a witty response even if he thought he could’ve spoken. Not-Joe smirked and turned away from him, back to the scene at hand. Patrick shifted again, slowly, hoping that he could get up without attracting too much attention.

            “Since you’re being so polite, Pete,” Not-Pete said. “We’re going to give you a bit of a choice. We don’t want to spend too long here, now that we’re outnumbered.” He smiled, his own tiny laugh at the joke that they could ever be outnumbered with the monstrosity of the other Patrick on their side. “Do you want to watch us carve him up like Patrick, or just break a few bones? He’ll know what to expect from one, and from the other… well, dogs like him heal just fine, don’t they?”

            Patrick’s brain wasn’t processing fast enough still, he knew it, but he realized quickly what he was missing. The hand, Joe’s hand, Not-Patrick was holding it up gently, but Patrick viscerally remembered the sight of him bending metal and crushing the little USB to shards and powder. Patrick could picture it, a crush and a twist and Not-Patrick could mangle his hand so badly Joe would never pick up a bottle of ketchup with it again, much less be able to play guitar.

            _Do something_.

            It was like being unable to wake up from a bad nightmare. He couldn’t move, couldn’t slog through the molasses choking all his muscles to do something, anything. And even as he thought with horror about what was to happen, Not-Patrick turned to him and winked.

            “N-no,” Pete said, shaking his head. So pale. “I’m not going to pick, that’s fucking sick, just let him go!”

            “You’re pathetic,” Not-Pete told him. “If you prefer, like I said, we can take one of the others.”

            Some lingering hero complex in Patrick’s head halfheartedly suggested he offer himself up, but his mouth remained firmly shut.

            Not-Patrick flexed his hand, just slightly, just enough for Joe’s eyes to bulge. Patrick jumped to his feet, and he was barely even aware of it. Not-Patrick caught sight of him and let out a burst of laughter.

            “Did you have something to add?” he asked. Patrick couldn’t plan anything, couldn’t think his way out of the situation, but nor could he just stay there and wait for the worst to happen.

            Patrick threw himself forward at the same time as Andy, even though every part of him yearned to move backwards, as far away from the things as possible. He managed to grab one of Not-Patrick’s arms at the same time as Andy grabbed the other, pulling and managing to move him with nothing but the element of surprise on his side, something that he knew would work only briefly. But as he held onto the egrigor, he thought they only needed a second, just long enough for Joe to get away.

            Patrick was in over his head, like he’d plunged back into deep water. Everyone was moving faster than him: Joe breaking free and Andy getting thrown back and the egrigor screaming, too-strong hands pulling him away, by the throat and under his shirt, and before he could throw up or black out, he saw a new scene unfolding in front of him. Not-Patrick was knelt on the ground, someone’s legs splayed out behind him, Not-Andy holding tight to Pete.

            There was a crunching, cracking noise, like so many twigs getting snapped, and then Patrick was overwhelmed with the sound of Joe screaming.

            The hand that wasn’t cutting off Patrick’s airflow drifted up, brushing over his nipple, the scars on his chest, and lingering on his sternum, just over his heart.

            “Miss you,” he heard Pete’s voice, breathy in his ear.

            Patrick told himself not to pass out, not again, to just stay there and stay present long enough to fix this, somehow.

            He heard two more cracks, like the noise of far-off gunshots, Joe’s screams increasing in pitch again. The hands that had been holding him back were just holding him up limply so that he wouldn’t fall over.

            “...see him come back from this one….” it was hard for Patrick to tell who was speaking, overwhelmed as he was with fear and sorrow, a deep grief for Joe. Because Jesus, God, Patrick couldn’t imagine, couldn’t even quite believe that these things, awful as they were, would take so much from someone.

            As fast as they were there, they were gone, or so it seemed to Patrick. He hit the ground in a heap, and wondered if his kneecaps would shatter under his weight, or if there would be anything left of him to care if they had. He closed his eyes and let himself fall. He didn’t want to see Joe or anyone, and someone else could take care of it, anyone else but him.

            He wasn’t sure how long it took him to recover, whether it was seconds or too many long, sticky minutes, but he stood up on shaking legs and stumbled over to where Joe was still spread eagle on the pavement, eyes scrunched shut. If Patrick looked at his face, he looked almost okay. If he looked away from the mangle that had once been his hand or the unnaturally bent legs, bone poking through and blood spilled on the ground.

            “It’s okay,” Patrick said. Of course, it wasn’t, but his voice was relatively steady, and Joe’s face smoothed minutely, so he took another breath, and kept going. “It’s fine. Everything’s gonna be okay.”

            Joe didn’t say anything, so Patrick brushed his hair back and touched none of his limbs.

            “We’re gonna fix this,” he said. His voice shook, and distantly, he wondered where the fuck everyone was, but there wasn’t time for that. “Can you wa- fuck, nevermind, lemme just-”

            Patrick looked up. Lauren was the first person he saw, pressed against the garage door with wide eyes like she had just witnessed a murder, completely immobile.

            “Help me,” Patrick said. He was aware of how wet his face was, tears streaming down his cheeks and warm blood smeared all around the bite on his neck, but he could worry about it later. “Help me get him into the car, _now_.”

            Lauren ran over. Patrick slid Joe’s left arm over his shoulders and stood up slowly. His knees buckled beneath him, but he didn’t fall, and the two of them managed to deposit Joe in the passenger’s seat of one of the cars. He screamed when they moved, when they set him down in the seat, and whimpered after he was already seated, but then seemed to still.

            Pete had run up to them by then, and Patrick didn’t risk looking him in the face, for fear if he saw _any_ Pete again he would just dissolve and lose it completely.

            “Andy’s okay,” Pete said, and Patrick hadn’t even realized he was hurt. “Do you want me to drive?”

            “I got it,” Patrick said. “Navigate. Ferrum’s.”

            Patrick got behind the wheel, and when both doors to the backseat slammed shut, he drove away.

            While driving, Patrick was finally able to start calming down. His breathing and his heartbeat started to steady, and though the blood still dripping from his neck was familiar enough to send him spiralling back into panic if he thought about it, so long as he focused on the road, he was mostly okay. They were on the highway before anyone spoke.

            “Joe,” Patrick said, voice faint. “Can you talk?”

            “Not really,” Joe gasped. Patrick glanced over at him, still all awful bent angles and scrunched shut eyes.

            “Your hand and your legs, yeah?” Patrick said. “Did he do anything else?”

            Joe shook his head, and Patrick felt a tiny amount of relief.

            “I can call Ferrum,” Andy said. “Let her know we’re on our way.”

            “Do that,” Patrick said. “Hold on, Joe.”

            It was a stupid thing to say, so he didn’t blame Joe for not responding. At least, so long as Patrick was driving, he had a decent excuse to not look at Joe’s hand, fingers to wrist all crumpled like paper. Patrick could imagine his hand throbbing in response. How long, he wondered, would it take for Joe’s accelerated healing to kick in? How long before Joe’s hand started healing wrong? Even if it didn’t…

            One thing at a time. Patrick drove at top speed, squeezed his way through inner city traffic, and parked illegally by the side of the curb in record time.

            “Is she waiting?” Patrick asked, though he was already out of the car, helping Andy to pull Joe out. He hadn’t been paying close enough attention to know.

            “Yeah,” Andy said. “Just inside, c’mon.”

            None of them were looking each other in the eyes, the opposite of their usual post-egrigor encounters.

            Just inside the lobby, Ferrum was waiting with a look of professional detachment on her face and a gleaming wheelchair in front of her. They sat Joe down again, with another gasp of pain coming from him, and they were off. Patrick knew there was so much he needed to ask - would Joe be okay? Were Pete and Andy currently okay? What became of the other one that attacked him? Were Ryan and Lauren okay? But it was enough to just keep himself breathing, to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

            All of them fit in the elevator together, but when they got off in Ferrum’s office, she held out a hand.

            “Let me do this in peace,” she said. “Setting bones on the clock is a difficult procedure, and I need as few distractions as possible.”

            Patrick nodded numbly, watched as Ferrum wheeled Joe off, and then, once the immediate danger was as taken care of as Patrick could help with, he let himself fall apart.

            Patrick sank down to the floor, hands covering his face, and felt the tears falling from his eyes. His breath drew in and out in big, rattling gasps. He couldn’t get enough air in, and when he could, he couldn’t expel it fast enough, and the whole time he felt the weight of an unspeakable monster with Pete’s voice on his ribcage. Before he knew it he was sobbing, even with the knowledge that there were other people in the room, and the only thing that felt remotely decent was letting himself fall to pieces.

            Minutes passed, and Patrick felt like he had a better grasp on time. His breath came easier, not like a temporary fix, but like he might actually be able to inhale and exhale like a human being again. The wound on his neck throbbed dully. When he finally looked up, his vision was clear for the first time in what might have been hours, and Andy and Pete were looking at him fearfully.

            “Hey,” Patrick said. He sniffed. “Um. How are you guys doing?”

            “Shitty,” Andy said. Pete didn’t say anything, so Patrick forced himself to look at him. Pete looked shell-shocked, white and gaunt and flat, but he was still standing, which was more than Patrick could say for himself. Patrick turned away, still trying to reorganize his head.

            “Pete said… you were hurt?” he said to Andy. Andy shrugged.

            “Got thrown,” he said. “So my back feels like shit, but that’s not new for me.”

            Patrick took another steadying breath. He was here, he was calm, he was fine.

            “Pete?” he asked.

            “Not hurt,” Pete said. He didn’t even try to look at Patrick, but he wasn’t lying, at least.

            “What about you?” Andy asked at last. “Are you… you know, okay?”

            “No idea,” Patrick said. “I don’t think I’m hurt too bad, though.” He put his hand up to his neck, let his fingers probe the tender wound. It hurt to the touch, and was still sticky with blood, but it didn’t feel so fresh and ragged anymore. The skin on his chest felt hot and prickly where Not-Pete had touched him, but he knew nothing was actually wrong with it.

            “I didn’t mean…” Andy began, then trailed off. Patrick knew what Andy meant—  his series of breakdowns— but he ignored that. It was easier to pretend it wasn’t an issue if everyone else would pretend along with him. Thankfully, Andy dropped it.

            “Has she come back out?” Patrick asked after a moment. “Either of them?”

            “Nobody,” Andy said. “There was a bit of shouting, but it stopped.”

            “Whose turn is it to ask what comes next?” Patrick asked.

            “Yours, I guess,” Andy said. “But I don’t have any answers.”

            “We get rid of these things, whatever the cost,” Pete said.

            “Yeah, but Joe,” Patrick said. “I mean, what if-?”

            “What if what?” Pete asked, nearly shouting. “He’s going to be fine!”

            “Pete, his hand,” Patrick said. “That’s not- I mean, think about the nerve damage-”

            “He’s going to be fine,” Pete said again. “He’s magic, for fuck’s sake.”

            “I don’t know if it works like that,” Patrick said, because they had to talk, had to face it, but Pete just shook his head.

            “We get rid of these things, everyone gets better, and that’s it,” he said. “That’s the only option we’ve got.”

            Patrick gave up and the three of them lapsed into silence. They weren’t in a waiting room, just left in the hallway, so Patrick didn’t bother standing up on shaky legs. He stayed seated on the ground, his arms wrapped around his knees.

            They couldn’t see much of the passage of time in the sunless basement, but it felt like hours had passed when Ferrum finally walked back out. Patrick stood up, feeling lightheaded and weak-chested again when he looked at her grave face.

            “He’s pretty heavily sedated right now,” she said. “But he should be okay. Everything got set in the right place and now only time will tell.”

            “Do you think…?” Patrick couldn’t say it out loud anymore. He couldn’t bear it.

            “Hard to say just yet,” Ferrum said. “But I can say that I have a lot of experience healing werewolves, and while I’ve never had to do anything quite so sensitive as setting the bones of a guitarist’s hand before, I’ve got very high hopes that with a little physical therapy, the worst that’ll happen is a bit of a twinge when it’s raining. That’s not a promise, mind you, but it’s a likely outcome.”

            Patrick let himself feel a little relief, just an echo of the real thing. It was so much better than he’d thought, so much better than he’d hope. The relief was tinged with fear that the egrigors would come back to finish the job, but he did his best to push the thought from his mind.

            “When will he be up?” Andy asked.

            “Soon,” said Ferrum. “Even the sedatives I make myself don’t last as long on werewolves as they do on humans, which is unfortunate for pain management. You can go in and see him, if you like. I need to head upstairs, check on my other appointments, and I’ll be back down in a bit.”

            Joe had been left in the same small room where the surgery had taken place. Next to his bed was a metal dish full of scalpels and tweezers still glistening red, which didn’t seem entirely hygienic, but Patrick supposed it was harder being doctor and nurse for all the magical creatures in the area. He sat down on the foot of the bed, and Joe’s eyelids slowly raised.

            “Real good high,” he slurred. “Wonder if she’s interested in selling the stuff.”

            “You’re okay,” Patrick said.

            “Relatively,” Joe said.

            “No, I mean, you’re really okay,” Patrick said. “Ferrum said it’s ll probably going to be fine.”

            Joe didn’t look all that relieved, but then, he was probably still out of it.

            “You okay?” Joe asked.

            “I’m not the one to be worried about,” Patrick said, because he didn’t want to lie in front of Pete and make him more worried than he already was. “I’m just really glad you’re okay.”

            “You should be,” Joe said. “You’d be shit at playing lead while singing.”

            Patrick realized, then, that Joe was in the same boat as him. Not going to address it, not going to take it seriously, not out in the open where everyone could see him fall to pieces. Since Patrick knew the feeling, he decided not to press further, and just gave him a tentative smile.

            “So, what’s the plan now?” Andy asked, still defaulting to Joe for leadership, even while Joe was in a hospital bed.

            “We should check back in with Lauren,” Joe said. Already he was sitting up, his eyes clearing, his facial features flattening to make him look expressionless. “See what happened with the one that got out.”

            “We should talk before we go back,” Pete said. “Ryan… told me something.”

            His voice sounded odd, not Pete’s usual brand of odd, but more pragmatic. Something in it struck Patrick as very cold.

            “Ryan told me,” Pete said, fidgeting with some of the metal tools, a tiny droplet of blood falling from the tweezers and back onto the tray. “There might be another way of getting rid of the egrigors. He said they might die if their creator was to die as well.”

            The room seemed to echo with silence.

            “Might?” Andy repeated. Pete nodded. “Then I don’t think it really even needs to be discussed.”

            “Why not?” Pete asked. “Look, I- I know it’s horrible, despicable, but there are fifty-one of these things. Some of them can touch people besides us, did you notice?”

            “What?!” Patrick hadn’t meant to shout, but he did, and Pete looked terrified.

            “You didn’t see,” he guessed. “Ryan - Ryan grabbed the- fuck, the me-one, before the others came. He touched him and pulled him back inside. Which means at least one of them can touch other people, and they’re clearly not guarded well enough to be considered safe. So, what I’m saying is we have to consider all our options.”

            “But you said ‘might,’” Andy said. “So, to rephrase, you want us to kill someone innocent on the off-chance it’ll make our lives easier!”

            “No!” Pete said, affronted. “I want to talk about killing a criminal who built monsters for fun on the likely chance it’ll keep people safe. Isn’t that what we do?”

            “Not when they’re trying to be better, we don’t,” Andy said. “She’s trying to fix it. She made a mistake. That counts as innocent.”

            “No,” Joe said. “I think we should consider it.”

            “Are you insane?” Patrick said. “She’s - she fucked up. And Ryan’s not exactly foolproof when it comes to magic stuff, is he? What if we go murder someone and he’s wrong and we get stuck with fifty-fucking-one egrigors forever, with no way of magically holding them back? Even besides that, I don’t want to just kill someone.”

            “You’ve killed plenty of people,” Joe said.

            “When they were endangering me or someone I loved, yeah,” Patrick said.

            “You dragged a vampire into the sun and watched him burn,” Joe said. “How is this more cruel?”

            “Lauren isn’t trying to kill me.”

            “But she was,” Pete said. “Maybe she didn’t know it, but she made the things that were dead set on torturing and killing you.”

            “I remember, thanks, sweetie!” Patrick said. “You seriously don’t see a moral difference between killing her and killing a vampire?”

            “If she’s endangering us and other people-”

            “We’re not going to plot a murder,” Andy said. “I’m putting my foot down, okay? I don’t like the fighting, all right? I don’t like the fact that we act like some fucking renegade magic vigilante force at the best of times, but if we sit here and talk about killing a girl that we’ve been hanging out with, that’s not self-defense, that’s murder. I’m not going to be a part of it.”

            “Neither am I,” Patrick said.

            Joe looked annoyed and angry, Pete looked a little betrayed, but neither of them responded. Patrick felt chilly, suddenly, like he had done something very wrong without knowing what it was.

            “She’s not a good person,” Pete said at last. “Normal people don’t try to kill their exes.”

            “We’ve already got a way of solving this that doesn’t involve murder,” Andy said. “Let’s just keep going, and then when it’s over, we never have to speak to her again.”

            None of them looked happy, but none of them were fighting.

            “How does your hand feel?” Patrick asked.

            “Doesn’t feel like anything,” Joe said. “So, here’s fucking hoping that’s a good sign.”

            Ferrum wanted to keep Joe overnight for observation, so Patrick, Andy, and Pete headed back to Lauren’s without him. Patrick didn’t want to go back, and actually wanted to burst into another bout of humiliating tears at the mere thought of it, but he sucked it up and got in the bloodstained passenger’s seat and focused on keeping his breathing steady as they drove back.

            Ryan still had his sunglasses on, even inside, and the sight of covered eyes made Patrick flinch. He was collapsed in one of Lauren’s too trendy chairs, looking half-melted.

            “Everyone’s locked back up,” he said. “I’m positive this time.”

            “You said that last time,” Pete said.

            “Yeah, well,” Ryan shrugged. “I am positive this time. Not sure what else I can do to reassure you, unless you wanna go down and count them yourself.”

            “Maybe in a bit,” Pete said. Then, after a moment, “Thank you. For everything.”

            “I’d say anytime, but I don’t want to do this again,” Ryan said. “Good luck with… everything.”

            He clapped Pete on the shoulder and walked out, and Patrick cringed away from him as he walked by. Just another person he’d gone to pieces in front of, a kid who used to look up to him who had seen him at the peak of weakness. The thought didn’t make him feel great.

            Then, they were alone with Lauren. She had curled up so tightly against the couch, Patrick’s eyes had skipped over her when they first entered the room. Patrick kind of liked it better that way. He felt for the girl, and yet.

            And yet.

            It was stupid, after every other horrible thing that had happened over the past few days, to feel, of all things, jealous. Of all the things he could feel: anger, betrayal, disgust, empathy, he felt a little bit jealous. Smart and accomplished and well-taught, with a clean house and on her way to a law degree, Lauren was so perfectly put together. Also, with her long dark hair and shimmery eyes and being nearly six feet tall in bare feet with a waist you could wrap your hands around... she was exactly Pete’s type. Exactly the opposite of Patrick.

            It was stupid, but still.

            “I’m so sorry,” she said.

            “You should be,” Pete said. “Explain.”

            “What part?” she asked, weary.

            “Why could Ryan touch him?” Pete asked.

            “The early ones can,” she said. “I cast the spells too wide. That’s why they’re glitchy. Wider scope, less powerful. I homed in better on you four as time went on.”

            “Why does he look like that?” Pete asked.

            “He was the first,” she said, looking away from all of them. “Pete Prime. It was still pretty fresh. Guess I saw you as a monster, then.”

            “One more,” Pete said. “ _Why did you do this?_ ”

            “I told you!” Lauren said. “And told you! I was heartbroken, I was angry!”

            “People get their hearts broken every day,” Pete said. “Why this? Why _them?_ ”

            “You because you ruin people,” Lauren said suddenly. She stood up, rising to her full height, taller than any of them. “You ruin people! You came into my life when I was fucking seventeen and told me I was special! You made me fall in love with you and told me we were soul mates, you were my first everything, and then you didn’t even have to courtesy to break up with me, just told me it was never anything to you knowing full fucking well it was everything to me.”

            She turned to Andy and Patrick, her eyes now tearful, still angry.

            “And why them? Because they let you!” she screamed. “I’m not the only girl you did this to, am I? I’m not the youngest, am I? But they just stand there and watch you do it and let it happen. That’s why you. That’s why them. For all I knew you were just going to keep mowing through girls for the rest of your life.”

            “You don’t know shit about me,” Pete said.

            “I know you leave people worse than how you found them,” she said.

            Pete didn’t say anything in response. He just stormed out of the house, leaving the door open behind him, late afternoon sunlight streaming into the dark living room.

            “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I never wanted this. I didn’t mean to-”

            “Don’t mention it,” Patrick pleaded. “Look, we’ll call you later, okay? We’ll keep in touch, figure this out.”

            “I really am sorry, though,” she said.

            “I believe you,” Patrick said. And he followed after Pete, the sound of Andy’s footsteps trailing after him.

            Outside, in the orange glow of the setting sun, Patrick took Pete’s hand and leaned against his side.

            “We’ll figure it out,” he promised. “We’ve gotten further, right? And Joe’s going to be okay?”

            “Yeah,” Pete said. “Yeah. Net positive, sure.”

            “I’ve got something that’ll actually help,” Patrick said. “We can bring Bronx home tonight.”

            Patrick couldn’t see auras, but he was sure that if he could, that Pete’s would be shining.

            They dropped Andy off back at home, with nothing to do but hope they were all safe, too exhausted to all keep tabs on each other that night. The two of them drove to the hospital together, Patrick occasionally leaning over to squeeze Pete’s arm, to let him know this was happening, something good and exciting, finally.

            The little bubble of happiness in Patrick’s chest burst when they got to the hospital and saw the gaggle of press just far enough away from the entrance to be legal. Surely, he thought, it wasn’t for them, but then, luck hadn’t been exactly running in their favor recently.

            “Just don’t look their direction,” Pete suggested. Patrick glanced down at his phone, and saw that he had missed calls from Ashlee, who never called him.

            “Yeah, this is in line with the day we’re having,” Patrick said. He squared his shoulders before they got out of the car, and the two of them slunk past the paparazzi towards the hospital. Just close enough to hear the shout:

            “Pete! Tell us the news about your baby!”

            “Do you have a game plan?” Pete asked under his breath. “Because explaining this when we walk out together is going to be a lot more complicated.”

            “I’ve got nothing,” Patrick said. “So, I guess we wing it.”

            “Right,” Pete said. He turned to face the crowd, gave them one curt wave, then grabbed Patrick’s hand right as they walked in the doors.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so, yeah, that's how the egrigors got here!  
>  I hope you guys enjoyed this! it wasn't as much fun to write as some chapters, I think because I already knew all this, but I'm hoping it was an entertaining read. Ireland is amazing and I never want to leave, but alas, I'll probably be back in the states for the next full chapter of thwth. still, it's been good! i discovered I like tea, my writing has improved, and I made so many friends. I'm having the time of my life out here, but I could never forget you guys or this story
> 
> next chapter has not even been outlined, so i hope you all are looking forward to mystery! even the author doesn't know what's coming, lol. but i know where it's going, and as i told the discord server, there's a while before everything /really/ goes to hell in a handbasket. In the mean time, I hope you enjoyed!!! thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Chapter Title by Metallica


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